


Equal Measures

by argus



Series: The Violence in Small Mercies [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Blood, Child Death, Childhood Trauma, Elves, Explicit Sexual Content, Father Figures, Foreshadowing, Guns! Razors! Knives!, Hurt/Comfort, IN SPACE!, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Magic, Memories, Outer Space, Past Child Abuse, Prisoner Loki (Marvel), Psychological Trauma, Self-Harm, Slow Burn, Unreliable Narrator, Whump, Whumptober, gammafrost - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2020-07-17 23:53:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 27
Words: 50,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19965301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/argus/pseuds/argus
Summary: Events deviate in Thor 2, and Loki doesnotsave the day.  Instead, the Hulk goes on an absolute rampage and only the team of Dr Strange and Loki have a chance at bringing him to heel.  What happens next?  Nothing Loki or Bruce could have ever expected.AKA: the one with Helgrid the elf, and a magic ring, and lots of introspection and plot turns and Tony being a good science bro through it all"I haven't the time to explain," Loki whispered.  "Just, just keep me awake," he muttered.  His vision was blackening at the edges and his eyelids felt so heavy.No, no, no - this couldn't happen.  "Keep me awake, or we both perish."





	1. Chapter 1

No.  
No!!  
  
No, no, not here, not this...  
How could he have let this happen? That bastard. He'd been right all along.  
There was only one monster.  
He was the monster.

  
  
***

  
Loki had gotten disturbingly good at the 'throw and catch' game he played with his drinking chalice. It wasn't a difficult game. And he'd played it well over 5000 times.  
  
One game for every year Odin had lied to him.  
One game for every year he took his mother for granted.  
  
There was another game he played, and it was called 'destroy anything and everything you can get your hands on'. Because it won't be enough. It will never be enough. Rend your hair, scream and beg, tear the books she left you to pieces. It will _never_ bring her back.  
  
Loki was still in the dungeons of Asgard. His violent grief had spent itself for the final turn many days ago. He had gone through several cycles of intense denial, rage, and mourning interspersed with relative days of calm. He begged and tried to bargain with the Norns until the words held no meaning, until his voice was useless. But as always, his pleas fell on deaf celestial ears.  
  
She was dead. Killed by the demon Kurse, following his own accurate and excellent directions right to her bedchamber. It was the equivalent of his own hand guiding the blade between her ribs, into her heart.  
  
He could feel it when it happened. A sharp stab in his own chest, ephemeral yet immediate. But she was the queen of the gods. It was unfathomable that she would perish from a single stroke. His worry at the time had been but a gnat, buzzing between the healers he expected would nurse her back to health.   
  
Instead, it was an anonymous guard who brought him the news that her body had been burned on a pyre of starlight and joined the legions of the valiant in Valhalla. 

The news wasn't brought by Sif. Nor was it Thor. It was one insignificant nameless solider, half a thought spared to tell the lesser son of her final passing.  
  
It had been just a smidgen of chaos he was after. How often was Asgard invaded, really? The Trickster god couldn't pass up an opportunity like that. But then, how wrong it had all gone, and how quickly too. How could he have foreseen that his little bit of shackled mischief would take the only light from his life?  
  
The decanter spilled. The chair splintered. The cushions torn to shreds. His ragged nails across the walls. His tears like molten lead down his face.  
  
He was an utter mess. 

And no one cared.  
  
Thor and the warriors three had followed the interloping Dark Elves against Odin's wishes. Loki was almost proud of the blonde oaf for defying the king of the gods despite his blatant disregard for Loki's circumstances. He really didn't expect anything more from his erstwhile brother. The news reached Loki eventually: the warriors three and the golden son defeated the rogue elves and stopped some sort of astronomical cataclysm. Hooray.  
  
Loki didn't know the details and he rather didn't care. Another victory for Odin's rightful heir. He'd be reveling in the throne room right about now, accepting verdant wreaths for his success and righteous vengeance. Was there anything else to be expected?

  
  
***

  
  
But Thor was not on Asgard. He was back on Midgard, trying desperately to understand how horribly the situation had gone out of control.  
  
"We know exactly where he is. That's not the problem." Nick Fury was shaking his head, palms flattened on the glossy table top. His one good eye traveled from face to face, piercing them to the spot. "The problem is we can't stop him short of using a tactical nuke. Is that what you're suggesting?"  
"I know nothing of your weaponry, Fury. But if your arsenal is so feeble it is ineffective against one creature, then I shall bring him in myself." The god of thunder shot a quick glance to Tony Stark at his snort of derision. "Something to stay, Stark?"  
  
"No, nothing at all. Other than I think you're punching way out of your league, Point Break. The Hulkbuster suit lasted 19.5 minutes of direct sustained combat. And by the end, I nearly bought the farm." The Hulk was out of control, and the evidence was written all over Tony's body. His right arm was bandaged and in a sling. The billionaire could only gesture with his left at his various visible wounds: purple eye swollen shut, broken nose, dislocated fingers, split lip still weeping blood. "Thanks for the lift by the way, Rhodey." He sent a two fingered salute towards War Machine. "So in short: you think you can do better? Be my guest. But give Fury a signed waiver beforehand, because I don't want Odin bulldozing our pathetic little planet when his favorite son ends up in a coma."  
  
Thor thought twice before responding. What Stark said was partially true. When his father and grandfather battled Laufey in the past, little thought was spared for the inhabitants of Midgard. It was a convenient skirmish location, nothing more. Several thousand years had not changed his father precipitously except to age and weary him.   
  
"So... what is your plan, Fury? What strategy do you propose?" Fury grimaced as he stood, lacing his fingers behind his back.  
"You're not going to like it." Thor simply glared back. He wasn't about to be goaded into a response by a mortal. His patience had grown by leaps in the intervening years. New Mexico. New York. Asgard. Nifleheim. He'd lost his mother. He was a different man than he had been.  
  
"Your people," Fury elaborated. "You said magic to them is science to us. You breathe it, you swim in it. We need some extra-special whatever you have up your sleeve to help us out here. I need a big freaking magical nuke so I don't have to launch a _real_ one."  
"You're mistaken. Some have the gift, but not all. To those of mixed breed, perhaps. My mother was one such creature: born of Vanaheim, but wed to Asgard. She was..." he paused for a beat. It was so strange, so awful to use past tense to describe the woman who birthed him. "She _was_ the strongest sorceress in Asgard. But she is no more. We cannot ask her help and there are few others who even approach the magnitude of her power."  
"I'm so sorry, Thor." Natasha looked genuinely pained, her slender brows knit together in sympathy. "I- we didn't know."  
"She was the queen and my mother, and her skills were without peer. I know of only-" No. He stopped himself mid-sentence, mid-thought. No. _Never_.  
  
Not that cur. That betrayer. That _hypocrite_. Criminal! Murderer!!  
  
"Who? I'll take whoever I can get, Thor." The director spread his hands expressively, entreating and desperate simultaneously. "We have to try something before people with itchy trigger fingers take the decision away from me."  
"No. There are other options."  
"Are there? If so, now's not the time to be shy. I'd hate to see Jamaica wiped off the map. Just try to get decent jerk chicken north of Montego."  
  
The silence around them was pregnant as all eyes focused on Thor. He heaved a great sigh before replying.  
  
"The king of liars is the only other whose power approaches her gift." The words dripped from his mouth like venom.  
"And who would that be? Is... he in the yellow pages?" Tony's raised eyebrow spoke of an ignorance Thor was strangely happy to shatter.  
"Loki."  
  
"Oh _hell_ no. I wasn't even there for New York and I think that's an awful idea." Rhodey interjected. The gathered team shared their assent with murmurs and nodding heads. A strategy failed before it started. They'd have to try another plan.  
  
"Um, sir?" Agent Hill held one hand to her earpiece. "NATO is on the line. They want a decision from us." Fury shook his head in frustration. "Sir. They have NORAD on as well, prepped to launch."  
"Well, it's my goddamn birthday, isn't it?" He stood to his full height, striding up to Thor. "Can he do it? I'm not asking will he, or will you work together, or will he betray us, because I don't want the answers to those questions. I want to know: _can he?"_  
  
Fury was a head shorter than Thor, but his argument was nonetheless compelling and unable to be rebutted. The Thunderer knew when to give in and let Midgard learn for itself the price of asking a favor from the prince of chaos.  
  
"Can he? Perhaps. I don't know how he fares in the dungeons, nor do I care. But if Loki is your best strategy, then you are certainly doomed." The mood in the room was somber, dejected. Thor stepped back a few feet and raised Mjolnir above his head. "Tell your kings to stay their hand. I will bring back the Trickster." He called to the heavens, "Heimdahl, I return!"  
  
Rainbow light filled the command room and Thor was whisked away in a thunderclap. The mood did not elevate in the slightest. What deal were they making, choosing between the devil they knew and the devil they couldn't control? They had little choice and were up against an enraged Hulk that had been cutting a swath of destruction through the northern hemisphere for the last 4 days straight. There were no good or easy answers. There were no straightforward solutions.

  
  
***

  
  
It was safe to say Odin was not fond of the idea. And Thor was no fan of hyperbole. But it allowed his disowned son the potential to gather more dishonor and for that, he couldn't refuse. He loved Loki, deep down. But right now, he was a father without recourse and husband in mourning. He wanted nothing more than to show the nine realms how right he was and how horrid and despicable Loki could be. Vengeance was not for a king to take, but he could guide its hand and paint Loki in all the splendid colors of failure. So yes, it was and yes Thor trudged down to the dungeons to come face to face with a haughty immaculate visage that was so clearly a cultivated illusion, that he couldn't help but feel a little bit validated.  
  
Good. Let him suffer.  
  
"Greetings. What brings the golden prince to my humble abode?" The prince of chaos was all white sharp teeth, perfectly sculpted hair, and plastic etiquette.  
"Drop it, Loki. I've no time for niceties. I have a bargain for you and nothing more." The terse words passed through his teeth like gravel.  
"Oh come now. You tell me of your urgency and I've already won, haven't I?"  
"Are you fit for battle?" Loki arched an eyebrow at him quizzically.

"Do you mean to beat your revenge into me? How droll." It was a plus that he was still feigning jocularity, but Thor couldn't stand on firm ground until he knew what lay beneath Loki's veneer of joy.  
"Midgard is in danger. A _friend_ is in danger. Banner is unable to be controlled and Fury seeks to reign him in before his kings destroy their own planet." The fire in Loki's eyes, even if an illusion, was too pure to be disguised.  
"Really? How intriguing. I fail to rule them, and they implode on themselves? I must say, I'm fairly eager to simply wait and see how this plays out."  
"Loki," his tone was a warning, albeit half-hearted. "You can understand my motives, but how about this? You can take your revenge on the Hulk for defeating your schemes with the Chitauri." A small smirk started slowly in the corner of Loki's mouth. It grew despite his best efforts to stop it until it was a fully formed grin, teeth flashing, glee reaching his eyes.

"Really? You'd allow me whatever methods necessary to bring your 'friend' to heel and protect your favorite realm?" He barked a short laugh. "Forgive me if I find that a little hard to believe."  
"We have no time to waste, Loki. Their weapons are already armed and pointed at each other. Are you fit, or no?"  
  
Loki's smile broadened further, if even possible, and his phantom projection clasped its hands behind his back before fading away. The stark truth revealed itself, Loki propped against the far wall, his hair disheveled, skin pallid, bloody scabs covering his hands and fingertips. The cell was a chaos of destroyed furniture and rent clothing. Only the pewter cup remained untouched, upright in the center of an unsoiled patch of floor.  
  
"I am as you see me." Loki spread his hands wide, using what appeared to be the last of his energy to push himself upright and approach Thor with languid strides to the cell's edge. "But for such a desirable bauble, I shall throw off the ash and sackcloth." He stood at attention, back rigid and straight, nose a millimeter from the energy barrier that separated the two men. "I'll need my armor. And... Helgrid's Signet. And a ride to Midgard." Thor grimaced.

"Why the signet? Father will not part with it easily."  
"Despite what 'father' thinks, I need an energy source to focus my craft on the beast. I'm sure Odin will not part with Gungnir should I ask. Or the Tesseract. Or you, with Mjolnir." He smirked devilishly. "Or... _would_ you?"  
"Certainly, could you wield it." He threw a smirk back to erase Loki's. "Are you quite finished with your demands?" Loki nodded in acquiescence. Thor nodded to an unseen guard and the energy wall dropped. "Follow me, fiend."  
Loki could barely keep his tongue in his head but for all the glee that radiated from him as he followed Thor.

***


	2. Chapter 2

Loki washed and dressed as Thor made the arrangements and gathered Loki's requests. He didn't see Odin. Or perhaps it was, that Odin didn't see him. No matter.

Within ten minutes they were striding down the Bifrost bridge to a quite cross Heimdahl who, only because it was Thor, begrudgingly opened the portal to the two men and ferried them to Midgard wordlessly. The gatekeeper dropped them exactly back in the command room of the aircraft carrier, now 60 miles south of where Thor had departed earlier.   
  
Agent Hill, Sergeant Rhodes, and Director Fury were about other tasks, leaving only Stark and Romanov as the welcoming committee. Tony was lounging back in one chair, making small talk with Natasha, legs propped casually on the shiny tabletop. They were only slightly startled by the arrival of the Bifrost in comparison to their shocked reactions on seeing Loki abruptly arrive in their midst.  
  
" _Jesus_ , give a guy some warning! That's one hell of a party favor you brought back from Asgard."  
"Hello Stark," Loki leered. "Pleasure to see you. Pity there aren't any windows in this room, but I'm sure we'll find a good view to enjoy together sooner or later." Natasha sidled between the two men before the situation could escalate, splaying her feet wide in her best menacing stance.  
"Thor, welcome back. Nukes are on hold for now. We are about two hours out from Negril where, thankfully, the Hulk hasn't moved from." She spared one terse glance for Loki. "We really don't have two hours. Whatever you're going to do, we need to do it yesterday."  
"Lovely to see you, Miss Romanov. My instructions are clear as glass. I stop the Hulk. By whatever means necessary?" She nodded tightly. "Good. I can understand you don't want the beast harmed, and I for that matter feel largely the same. He's too valuable an asset to simply 'put down'." The dark god began to pace. All eyes were on his figure meandering to and fro as he unwound his strategy. "He cannot be confronted by brute force. Ergo, why you chose me and not Odin's favorite warrior," he cast one idle eyebrow in Thor's direction. "And also why dear brother Stark looks like he was chewed up and spit out by Jörmungandr." He paused for effect, and Tony started tapping his fingers on the table impatiently. " _What is_ the best strategy? That's easy. I'm sure Doctor Banner would agree: every action needs an equal and opposite reaction. Or simply, no action at all."  
  
Fury and Hill strode into the doorway behind Loki, but he didn't deign to turn around. "Director, welcome." Not missing a beat, he continued. "Where would the great green dragon be unable to wreak havoc?" He paused for an answer, but none was forthcoming nor expected. "Why, where there is nothing to destroy." One pallid finger pointed upwards and he waited for the mortals to catch up to the fairly blatant point.  
  
"Space? Hulk in _space_ , that's your idea?" Natasha's tone was bitterly sarcastic, but then frowned in thought, eyebrows raised. "That might work."  
"Great idea, your highness. How do you propose we get our favorite rampaging Avenger on a spacecraft without tearing it to pieces?" Fury's voice was thick with irony.  
"'Magic', as you call it. But two are needed to break through the gravity well of this sphere. Never fear, there is another on this planet. I can feel him. And I know he has one of the infinity gems." Loki looked around the room accusingly, but no faces betrayed whether he was right or wrong. Loki continued on, undeterred. " _Fetch him_ out from whatever rock you're hiding him under. I with the Signet," he materialized it onto one brandishing finger, "and he with his source of power will be more than sufficient to carry Banner where he can do no harm."  
"And no harm will come to him?" Thor prompted. He wasn't a fan of Loki being the center of attention, but he had to admit his plan seemed good. Perhaps too good to be true.  
"Not one hair on his _furious_ head will be plucked." He feigned realization at the pun he made, turning to Fury's bald head with palms outstretched. "Present company excluded of course."  
  
"It's not a bad idea, Reindeer Games, but you are forgetting one thing." Loki turned to Tony as he would an annoying gnat, one eyebrow archly raised. "We humans need _oxygen_ to breathe. And _air pressure_ to prevent our guts from boiling away into space. How do you expect to accomplish that... in a vacuum?" Stark's voiced raised with his blood pressure until he was standing, striding towards Loki, unconsciously challenging his plan. "I'm not letting you _kill Banner_ simply because you think we're _too stupid_ to see through your little plan."   
"Such feeble faith you have in your best chance to avoid your comrade's destruction?" He bent slightly until he was nose to nose with Stark. His evenly-paced tone brooked no argument. "Summon the one who holds the infinity gem and meet me where the mighty doctor destroys your realm." He addressed the room without breaking Tony's gaze. "Thor, if you would be so kind as to lead me there? I would travel myself, but conserving energy is my primary goal until we engage Banner directly."

  
  
***

  
  
It was disconcerting to voluntarily cling to Thor's back as they flew through Midgard's low atmosphere, pulled above the waves by Mjolnir from the aircraft carrier to the island. But Loki was, for once, not lying when he'd stated energy conservation was his utmost concern. Judging by the scale of this realm, the mass of the globe, and the gravity it commanded, another sorcerer or sorceress was absolutely necessary to contain the Hulk outside of its control.  
  
Soon enough, there was land flying under their feet. The jungle smell of growing leaves, pungent rot, and burning organic matter filled his nose. This sphere, so full of life it was nearly exploding with fecundity. It was offensive, lewd, and indecent. He could see a cloud of dust rising from the ground where the forest ended and the rim of the city of Negril began. Meager Midgardian homes of stone and wood were broken into pieces like a child's destroyed toys. At the center of the chaos was the great green dragon.  
  
Mjolnir set the two gods down at the edge of the circle of entropy that surrounded the Hulk. He spotted them, screaming in rage. The mere sound caused the hairs on the back of Loki's neck to stand on end. It was an involuntary reaction, a lizard impulse to run. But he was far from giving into it. He was here to take his revenge, under full license from 'Earth's Mightiest Heroes'. What could be better?  
  
The beast rushed at them and Loki knew it was too soon. He had the signet but the second sorcerer he needed had not arrived. Stark was tardy in fetching him. The best he could hope for was to hold Banner in stasis without draining too much of his own energy. He focused on the signet on his middle finger, ancient magic glowing yellow and dim in its core as it woke from a long slumber. This would work, he was confident.  
  
But then there was Thor, in the way again, stepping between the oncoming missile of the Hulk and Loki. Now engaging him in an epic struggle of brawn against brawn. Loki couldn't help but roll his eyes, stepping away from the fray. Fine. Let Thor exhaust himself. That suited him well. Perhaps the big oaf would last long enough for his planned backup to arrive and Loki wouldn't have to lift a finger in the meantime.  
  
Of course, that assumed that the other sorcerer/ess could be convinced by Stark to assist. That they wouldn't be unconcerned, or occupied, or simply offended by the crass plutocrat's unyielding negotiating style... 

Oh Norns, they were doomed, weren't they?  
  
Thor was locked in battle with the beast now, hammer meeting fist. Fists meeting clawing fingers, gnashing teeth. Thor knocked Banner to the ground, and the green beast sprang back up for more punishment. Loki mused that it was novel to be the spectator, but as the golden god withstood a barrage of wilting blows, even he could see that the rage of the doctor had reached a new terrifying peak. The creature was mindless, beyond reason, beyond any hope of tiring.  
  
"Banner, I know you hear me! Stand down before-" Thor had backed away, but the beast sprang on him, green fist meeting golden stubbled jaw, wiping away his regal voice. Thor was fast, but Banner was faster. Thor was a god, but even gods fatigue. For every blow, Banner returned it threefold. Then fourfold. In short manner, he pounced on Thor's fallen body, bruising it with his knuckles into a fine Asgardian paste against the ground.  
  
Prey defeated, he turned to Loki. The dark prince couldn't help his breath catching in his throat, staring down the Hulk's full throttle charge. The beast's eyes narrowed as he ran. There was some spark of bitter recognition, Loki was certain. A condensing of his already potent rage. The demi-god swallowed stiffly as a single drop of sweat ran down his forehead, but it passed unnoticed, as he focused all his energy through the signet, back through his cupped hands, and into the air in front of him. A tangible shield, a block thrown in front of a charging bull, air magically condensed into a shell more formidable than titanium. Loki braced for the impact, but it was abruptly curtailed by a halo of fire that encircled the Hulk's feet, sweeping them out from under him. In fact the entirety of his bulk disappeared into the ground as if a great hole had swallowed him up.  
  
Loki spent half a second in confusion before he realized what he'd just seen. The sorcerer. A twin halo appeared in the sky above and the Hulk reappeared, falling out of it and helpless, back into the first fiery portal on the ground.  
  
A simple trick, really. Loki's brow creased slightly, disappointed in himself for failing to think of it first. No matter.  
  
"I suppose I have you to thank for the distraction?" The words smoothly slipped out of his mouth, refusing to turn around and validate the presence he felt at his back until he was properly addressed. He let the air shield fade away, energy gathered once again back into the signet, his own hands, his core.  
  
The Hulk fell again, in an endless loop through the parallel circles.  
  
"You're welcome," pronounced a smooth American voice. "I wouldn't have thought you'd need help given your reputation, but I'm happy to oblige." Cocky, too. Loki turned at last, fixing him with a piercing stare, sizing up the caped figure.   
" _Need_ is hardly the correct word, but I'll allow it given your limited vocabulary." The tall figure, silver hair gathering at his temples, opened his mouth to retort, but Loki swooped in first. "Breath is wasted in impotent posturing, magician. We have a mutual goal, and I for one would see it completed as swiftly as possible. This is merely an errand, and I have limited patience for _drudgery_." The figure nodded curtly, message received. The Hulk continued to fall through the circles of fire, over and over.  
"Alright then. What's your plan?" 

"I will draft it swiftly, as I know better than anyone that you can't keep these constructed portals open forever." He received a quarter of a grimace, and Loki knew he'd hit home. "We focus our energies into separating the Hulk from the surface of the Earth. It will take considerable focus and coordination to lift him and ourselves into the atmosphere and out of this realm's gravity well." The sorcerer's eyebrows lifted, even as he kept one eye on maintaining the Hulk in his temporary free-fall prison. "Are you up for the challenge?"  
"Yes, but slight modification. I have a knack with these portals. Let me build a ladder with them, each one a little higher and a little higher... As he falls, he'll actually ascend upwards into the sky. Then _you_ focus on lifting the two of us and keeping all three of us breathing and our blood from boiling." He raised a hand at Loki's opening mouth and cut him off. "Stark filled me in. You plan to take him to space, right? Let's not exhaust ourselves getting all three of us there." 

Loki grimaced but inside he conceded that this plan was more efficient than his own. He nodded to the caped man and channeled his energy through the signet, magnifying it and curdling the air around both of their feet. Slowly, it gathered force and spirited both of them off the ground. He caught a widening of the nameless magician's eyes as he realized he was no longer touching soil, but no further reaction. It bolstered Loki's flagging confidence from being strategically trounced and the corner of his mouth curved into a smirk. After all this was over, he would have to properly assess this man: this Midgardian magician. It was only fair play, learning about and properly estimating his potential enemies.  
  
Loki continued to focus on elevating the two of them while his erstwhile partner focused on creating portal after endless portal to keep the Hulk powerless and continually falling. The dark prince nearly let his focus lax. It was too amusing to watch the range of expressions flicker in wide variety over the green monster's face. First rage, then surprise, then confusion, then rage again, cycling in an endless parade of hilarity. Despite this distraction, Loki was lifting the two of them higher and higher. They were past the tops of the abused buildings. Over the broken palm trees. Out until the edge of the island was visible, the waves migrating towards the shore in an inexorable parade. Then the first layer of cloud swathed them and for a moment, the other magician missed in his rings, temporarily blinded by something as tenuous as water vapour. The Hulk fell beneath their feet, and Loki paused in his ascent to allow the other sorcerer to regain control of the Hulk and continue to spirit him upwards.   
  
Up, up, they climbed until he could see blood flush through the cheeks of his compatriot. Oxygen, he mused. What fickle creatures. He gathered even more energy and began to collect gaseous molecules around their rising bodies. An artificial cloud formed around the unlikely trio as they continued to climb and bore their expelled exhalations heavenward. The Hulk was grunting, bellowing, _screaming_ , to be let down but neither man let up. The fire circles climbed higher and higher. Loki could tell the other sorcerer risked one awestruck glance to the horizon as the curvature of their expansive world came into view. The blackness of space could finally be differentiated from the thinning blue. They were really making progress now. The signet heating up on Loki's finger was evidence of that.   
  
They were both breaking a sweat, truth be told. But they were nearly there. The last of the clouds fell away and there was nothing but ocean blue beneath them, meeting their feet through miles of simple void. The Hulk bellowed, his rage unable to find purchase. The earth stolen from his grasping fists. Loki smiled and cast a glance at his fellow magician.

"Good progress. But we're not done. This is no time to rest. We have to take the beast to the convergence point, where the gravity well loses its potency." The caped man spared a glance back, perspiration beading on his head. The fact that there was perspiration to bead at all was credit to Loki's ability to collect an artificial atmosphere around the three of them.  
"You mean... _no_... The _Lagrange point_ between the earth and the moon?" He scoffed, "no, that's crazy. _Even_ for you." Loki finally had the mental upper hand between the two of them.  
"Whatever Midgardian term you use, our destination is the same." Loki pointed upwards into the black void, towards the orbiting satellite of stone. "Stark and Fury want the Hulk controlled. Amuse me by telling me you have the ability to do that here, where the gravity is low but ever-present, and I will _gladly_ crown you sorcerer supreme." His lips curled into a haughty knowing smile.  
"Fine. We keep going. But I think my contributions should shift at this point. Free-fall is effectively achieved." As he spoke, the human nodded towards the enraged green beast, spinning like a gyroscope, bellowing his anger out to the stars. In fact, he wasn't falling _towards_ the earth anymore, but buoyed at the other's whim in orbit around the Earth.  
  
"Fair enough," Loki retorted. "Keep the breath in our lungs, if you would." He continued to boost them further skyward, not waiting for confirmation from the other magician.   
  
It was several long hours of mental strain before Loki finally declared: "we are here." The signet was glowing hot on his finger and the sphere of the Earth was far, far, below. The moon and the Earth were diminished and in equal proportion in the sky. He could tell the sight impressed the other magician, even if he tried desperately to contain his reaction. It was a feat truly beyond the capability of even the most cunning and able Midgardian, each of them having grown up under a static blue sky: suddenly confronted with the enormity and totality of the void, sprinkled liberally with a billion billion points of light. Their unfastened hair floated around them like a cloud. The red cape billowed out in all directions from the magician, looking garish and useless simultaneously. Loki threaded his fingers in the feeble atmosphere they had carried along with them and finally relived the other of his magical duty. 

"I will keep this collection of gasses around us. You should report back to Fury and Stark. The Hulk has been contained. I eagerly await their confirmation that our chore is accomplished." The second sorcerer grimaced, taking a deep breath of their precious captive oxygen.   
"I'll check back in with the SHIELD team, but I _doubt_ our work here is done." The man opened one more portal, looking out into a nondescript office. It was novel to see something so everyday ordinary and yet exotically rich with life appear in the middle of the void. "And... the name is Stephen Strange by the way. _Doctor_ Stephen Strange." Loki couldn't stifle the sneer from his face.   
"I have one Doctor abandoning me and another bellowing to be let loose. The moniker seems to mean very little in your realm." He received a wordless scoff from the other man before he stepped through his own portal and was gone. Only Loki and the Hulk remained, orbiting each other in the space where gravity lost its every power.  
  
The green beast screamed at Loki, enraged at his inability to destroy. Like a toddler pulled away from his toys. Loki returned his glare, seething internally at becoming one more Midgardian pawn.  
The Hulk roared. Loki roared back.  
"What?!! What? I am at as much of a loss as you, you _foul_ beast. You drag me away from Asgard for what: _this?_ To be screamed at by a petulant child? An ant, separated from his hive. An infant, dragged away from his self-important destruction." As Hulk huffed in response, Loki scoffed. "You dim creature. This exercise is _so very_ beneath me. I wearied of this task hours ago." The Hulk snarled at him, unable to form a cogent response through his pervasive haze of anger.

"Once the other doctor returns, I am taking my leave of you." Even as he said it, he knew it wouldn't be true for two reasons. He had no desire to return to prison on Asgard and he had no idea what Odin would require of him next. His favorite captive Jotun once again kept on a very convenient leash. It was odious. 

He also knew these Midgardians. Too well. They would not be satisfied by the simple containment of the Hulk. They were so selfish and greedy, like children on the cosmic stage in every sense of the word.   
  
In the meantime, he could have a staring contest with this amorphous creature. After a bit, he got bored locking glares with the unchanging monstrous face and instead started to play with the lack of gravity. He sent the Hulk spinning end over end like the pewter drinking chalice in his prison. Flip and catch. Flip and catch. He giggled at the outraged reaction from the beast but also at the irony of his own situation. Effectively imprisoned at the 'Lagrange' where he could hurt no one. He was both captor and captive. Had he been outwitted by Stark and Fury? His blood raced and he ground his teeth together.   
  
But in the end, he knew the situation could only be temporary. After all, he had no qualms about killing the green beast that had bested him, and slipping away to whatever corner of the universe he chose. 

No, it wouldn't come to that. Midgard needed him to keep their favorite weapon alive and in check.  
  
When the fiery portal opened into the void some minutes later, the caped doctor was accompanied by Agent Romanov and fresh oxygen flooded their artificial bubble. The two mortals caught Loki wheeling the Hulk like a top, faster and faster while the wide eyes of the creature betrayed his surprise and anger.  
"Loki! _Jesus Christ._ This is not what we meant by contain the Hulk. Stop spinning him," she demanded.  
"Only if you ask nicely."  
"Loki, _please_ stop spinning Doctor Banner. Have you thought about what 500 gallons of Hulk vomit will do in zero G?" No, he actually hadn't thought that far ahead, and the smile was wiped from his face and the green bulk stilled. _How_ did these creatures keep getting ahead of him? "Thank you."   
"Director Fury sends his thanks for stopping the Hulk's destructive tirade. Now that's accomplished, we need to get him to revert to Doctor Banner. Hence, Plan A." Dr Strange gestured at the auburn haired agent, her long locks tied neatly in a bundle to foil the effects of zero gravity.  
"Plan A? This should be amusing." Loki spread his arms wide and gave the trio space.  
  
Her voice started low, nearly inaudible.  
"Hey big guy, it's Natasha. How are you feeling? We'd like you to come home," she cooed. "Would you like that?" The green creature contemplated her svelte figure, floating ever closer. It seemed to be working, Loki mused. Did this creature have an emotional attachment to the female agent? Ha! It was laughable. The Hulk in love? He stifled a laugh and a grimace at the same time. It was disgusting to comprehend. "Sun's getting low big guy. Time to go home. Sun's getting low," she repeated like a mantra, reaching out one hand, palm up in supplication to the beast.  
  
He howled in her face and Dr Strange pulled her back like a bait fish on a string. The Hulk gasped and swiped at nothing, trying to vent his anger on the creatures nearest to him. Regardless of who they were to him personally. Regardless of any feeble attachment they assumed.  
"Bruce. It's me. Natasha. _Please..._ " she tried once more without impact on the rioting beast before them.

"Plan B?" Loki mocked, but minutely regretted it when he saw the unshed tears in the agent's eyes. There was something there. Maybe in her head only, but something regardless.  
"There is no Plan B. Not yet." Dr Strange held the agent by one arm gingerly, support masquerading as a tether to keep her from floating away.  
"Ah," Loki smirked. "It is as I feared." Why name something 'plan A' unless you actually had a second plan or were trying to bury your incompetence under false bravado?

"I will level with you. Director Fury wants Dr Banner brought in. Calm, sedated. Not in the form you see before you. However, various world leaders do not have the same opinion. They are quite happy to have _two_ of their greatest threats suspended halfway to the moon." Dr Strange dusted his hands for effect. "Out of sight, out of mind."  
"If you harbor _any_ hope that I will stay her-"  
"Not in the slightest. Fury doesn't nurture that fantasy either. But we do need to come up with a plan. Or folks with itchy trigger fingers may find themselves aligning some warheads in your direction."  
"Delightful. Don't delude yourself that an intimation like that is the least threat to me," Loki sneered.  
"No, but Thor and Odin promised you _something_. Freedom? I don't know. Help us come up with a Plan B. That's our request." Loki was only sticking around because he was intrigued. Yes, that's what it was. That's what he told himself...

"What has worked in the past to pacify the beast? Certainly, not only the wiles of our delightful Agent Romanov, alluring as they may be." He cracked a wide grin at her expense.  
"Usually, he just tires himself out," she admitted. "But it's been days. I'm not holding out hope."  
"Or?"  
"Or if I or one of the team can get him to calm down. That works too. But not today," she spread her hands, palms up, defeated. "Nothing else that I've seen."  
"What a creature you pretend to have leashed!" Loki chuckled. "You think you control him when you have literally no methods that don't rely on his own volition?" He shook his head, sending black floating hair in a dance around his head. "Pathetic." He continued to laugh at their expense.  
  
"And you have a better idea? This is what we're hoping, after all."  
"Ha, _perhaps_. But my energy has been expended in copious amounts bringing the dragon to this location." Oh, he _did_ have an idea. He'd had one back on Asgard. But he was going to milk this. "I will not be able to keep this bubble aloft and attempt to bring back Dr Banner simultaneously," he lied. Dr Strange heaved a great sigh.  
"I know what's coming. The magic words you want to hear. But I can't stop it all the same... 'What do you need from us?' ", he bookended his utterance with another long-suffering sigh. Loki tried to clamp down the smile that blossomed over his face and failed. _Yes_.  
  
"First, I need some time to rest and regain my energy. A sorcerer as powerful as yourself should have no problems keeping the beast in stasis here in the intervening hours." He did them a courtesy and quantified the time frame. He shouldn't play into their expectations all at once, after all.   
"And then?"  
"And _then_ , I need something in return for my services." He felt the hackles rise on both Midgardians simultaneously, so he spoke to their basest fears. "A night with Agent Romanov, perhaps?" Oh, their repulsion and terror was delightful. "Oh my dear, no need to fret. Your substantial charms indeed have no effect on me. No, perhaps a night to simply torture you to my heart's content?" The professional mask slipped back on over her features. "Ah, it would be fun, but that's not what I'm after."  
  
" _What_ then?" The other sorcerer's tone was terse. "Get to the point." Loki did as commanded and pointed at the amulet around the sorcerer's neck. "The Eye of Agamotto?! You're joking."  
"Yes, I am. Even I don't trust myself with that delicious jewel. No, I want the creation of Dr Henry Pym. _Yes_ , I know about it. There's far too much time to read in the dungeons of Asgard." Whoops. He hadn't meant to let that slip. They hadn't known the nature of his punishment by Odin. But the information slid over them like water over eels. "Your science does have uses. And frankly, I want to see how much mischief I can cause with Pym's suit in Odin's court." He threw that in, just to ensure they knew he intended no more harm to their world. No more immediate harm, certainly.  
  
"The safe return of Dr Banner in exchange for the most bleeding-edge technology we have? How am I not surprised? But thankfully it's not my decision, it's Fury's and to a more significant aspect, Dr Pym's." Strange drew open a portal and guided himself and Natasha through it. "I'll _ask_ , it's the most I can do. For now, stay here. And try to stop yourself from spinning the Hulk like a toy?" Then the two of them were gone and he and the Hulk were alone once more. Loki turned his focus back to the green monster. He was nothing short of delighted with himself.  
  
"Well, my _friend_. It appears we have some time on our hands. How shall we pass it?"

***


	3. Chapter 3

  
"How shall we pass the time, hmm?" 

But Loki already knew the answer, and expected none. It was why he'd chosen to ask Odin specifically for Helgrid's Signet. Helgrid was a powerful and clever elf who'd tricked a cadre of dwarves into crafting a ring millennia ago. An elemental crystal of pure neutrons adorned it, gripped in prongs shaped like talons. The gem focused any significant energy thrust into it. The body of the ring was formed around a stolen lock of none other than Urd's hair. It was Urd's hair only, not that of her sisters. After all, the other Norns could see what is and what would be. But she, weakest of the three, only seeing what had been, could not prevent the theft. As the ring was being cast, Helgrid poured a portion of his elvish power into the signet to charge it.  
  
Despite his ingenuity, Helgrid died a sad death: deprived of the love of his life by the vengeful sisters. All the power of his craft and the signet he'd created could not stop him from simply wasting away, mourning a broken heart filled with regrets and 'what ifs' that had been stolen away by the very creatures whose power he'd pilfered first.  
  
What had been. That was important. Not only did the signet augment Loki's powers and allow him together with Dr Strange to lift the Hulk to his current purgatorial position, but it had the potential to crack the mystery of the Hulk's rage wide open.  
Before Strange and his retinue returned, Loki aimed to test it and ensure he could do what he'd promised. It certainly wouldn't do to be caught out, impotent and unable to deliver on his cryptic promises.  
  
But the signet needed blood to be activated. Or so the tale went. So Loki tripled himself. One phantom clone to the fore, one to the left, and he himself moved to the right. Each figure approached the Hulk warily, and the trickster could see the beast's consternation. The Hulk preferred brute force. Magic tricks and intellectual sparring were his weakness. His blazing brown eyes darted from one menacing figure to the other. Which one should he smash?   
  
And then his green nostrils flared and he knew. He swung hard to his right. Loki just barely dodged a fist that certainly would have knocked him unconscious had it connected. 

So the Hulk was not entirely devoid of strategy after all. Loki dissolved his two clones and tried once more. This time with three clones. The four apparent Lokis approached from each cardinal direction, the original again on the right. But this time, Loki had pulled the pocket of air slightly away from the Hulk, leaving no opportunity for him to scent out the true figure. The beast's green skin blanched as he dealt with four stalking demi-gods, blades extended, and the onset of hypoxia.  
  
The Hulk shook his head to clear it, but it was of no avail as four dark gods raised their daggers, sliced open their own palms and then stood simultaneously to slice into the beast.  
  
Loki bore down with all his might, expecting he would barely split the green hide open. But the blade smoothed over unbroken skin, failing to puncture it at all. It was as if the edge of the knife was as dull as a spoon. He raised the blade again and stabbed this time, intending to sink it into his flesh to the hilt. But again, he was foiled by the creature's armored epidermis.  
  
By this time, oxygen or no, the Hulk had determined which of the 4 stabbing gnats was real and which were fiction. He spun in the zero gravity and faced Loki, but he was too slow and the sorcerer retreated to a safe distance.  
  
"Damn you, creature. Here's your air, returned." The Hulk took great gulping breaths, color returning to his impenetrable skin while Loki mused.  
  
Plan B, as it were. If Midgardian biology was anything like the other realms, there were several softer, more vulnerable places where he could ensure each man's blood mixed sufficiently to activate the signet. The conjunctiva of his eyes. The mucus membrane in his mouth. But the alveoli in his lungs held a certain appeal. After all, in the midst of the void, the green monster was kept alive only at Loki's whim by the oxygen he was actively keeping captive.   
  
Irony was one of the best methods for mischief. The blood was already welling in great droplets across the wound on his own pale palm. Without gravity, they were perfect spheres and it only took a delicate shake of his wrist to send them into a floating cloud. How easy then to push a few of the globules on a current of air up to the flaring nostrils of his opponent.  
  
"Breathe in, you half-breed." And the Hulk had no opportunity to object, the droplets entering his nose and being ushered with all haste into his lungs where he coughed slightly. But the damage was done, Loki could tell. The signet warmed on his finger.  
  
"Now we are connected, you mindless creature." The sentiment unnerved him more than it effected the Hulk, unable to comprehend the impact of Loki's words. The dark god focused his energy again, through the signet, into the bloodstream and further into the mind of the creature.   
  
He could feel the folds and divisions within the monster's mind. There were spiky, frothing areas which clearly belonged to the Hulk. And other spaces, smooth and placid which were undoubtedly Dr Banner. And then there was an area like quicksand, somewhere in the middle, that Loki wasn't sure of at all.   
  
He avoided that area entirely. This was a test, after all. Best to tread lightly until he was certain of his strategy and of his reward from the Midgardians. He danced over the calm areas lightly, picking out the softest patch.  
  
The principle of equivalent exchange governed the signet. Such a green and verdant area of the creature's memory needed little at all to access. Loki held his unwounded hand to his own mouth and bit down lightly, just until the indents of his teeth were visible, but not nearly enough to break the skin.   
  
Pain for access. Open Sesame.  
  
He closed his eyes and behind them blossomed a memory, wholly foreign. He was clothed in a shapeless garment, a sharply geometric hat upon his head. He was standing on top of a platform with a dozen other humans. At his feet, seated, were hundreds of others.  
  
"Robert Banner." A name called, echoing through the cavernous space. His feet moved unbidden, compelled towards the center of the gathering. A woman, age etched into her face welcomed him with a bright smile. He could feel the pride swelling in his own chest. This was so odd, so unsettling. What was this memory?   
  
He stretched out his hand and took from the woman a parchment scroll. Her other hand embraced his right, shaking it lightly as if her grip was worn from considerable use. Interaction complete, he continued onto the other side of the platform, down the stairs and back into the seated throng.  
"Kelly Barrett... Adam Bawer." Names were recited through the atmosphere. It was a happy memory certainly. He sat back down among the crowd and shared smiles and whispered commendations with those around him.  
  
The memory faded. How odd. But Loki only cared that the test was a success. The signet would work and he had the capability to use it. The Hulk was at his mercy and ready to be conquered by his superior cunning. A smile of victory split his face. All he had to do was wait for the return of Strange and Romanov, or other Midgardian minions. After all, he wasn't performing miracles for free.

  
  
***

  
  
The beast howled impatiently as anything he could smash was kept at an arm's length distance. There was the puny god, and the tall cape man, and the metal can man, and while he didn't hate all three of them, he just wanted to smash and smash and smash! Banner was in his head, too. Screaming and screaming and while he usually used the small man's anger as his fuel, now he just wanted it to stop. It had been days of rage. Days and nights and days and nights of nothing but blurred scenery and crushed concrete and nagging people-insects buzzing around his head while he swatted them away. But to be so angry for so long? It was exhausting!  
  
Banner would not stop screaming. This had never happened before. Small man was always angry, but he was never like this. Would the metal can man help him? He howled at the trio, it was all he could think to do over the unending yelling inside his own head.  
  
"Whoa. You are really freaking us out, bud." Tony's wide eyes darted from the Hulk to Loki and back. "I'm at a loss. Banner has never spun this far out of control." Floating in the void, he cast a sidelong glance to Stephen, then to Loki. But not daring to take his eyes off the Hulk for a moment. "If you have a legitimate plan, Rudolph, then I say take it. I... I just want Bruce back. This is freaky. I don't like it at all."  
"I have to agree with Mr Stark. If you can make Banner revert, I'm in."   
  
Loki did his best to stifle his victorious grin, morphing it into a grimace of strain.  
"I can't guarantee anything, but I'm confident I'll be successful. It will be a long process, however... I will need time, and space, and someone to freshen the air when it grows stale." He cast one long finger casually at the other sorcerer. "I assume you're up for the task." The caped man nodded tersely in response. "Alright then," he turned his attention back to the Hulk, "let's get started."  
  
For effect, Loki swirled his fingers in the air, letting the oxygen particles he touched flare bright yellow. He could feel three sets of eyes burning into him: one unimpressed, one anxious and fearful, and one simply enraged. The air danced with glowing sigils that were utter nonsense. It was all for show. Give the Midgardians something to ponder. All the while, the devices behind his method were quite straightforward.   
  
Pain for access. Blood for knowledge. Equal exchange. 

Loki surreptitiously bit the inside of his cheek enough to draw blood and felt the signet on his hand warm again with power. The Hulk, despite visibly fighting it, closed his eyes and went still. Loki could hear Stark's sharp intake of surprised breath, but it was on the periphery of his consciousness. He was coasting over the placid areas in Banner's mind now. No more need of happy memories. No, he had to pull out the splinter that was trapping him in his bestial incarnation.  
  
Into the spiky dense form in the other's mind, pushing through to find a cohesive memory. Static images were thrown at him, feelings of rage, violence, but it was all the Hulk. All post-transformation hazy memories of crushing buildings and tearing vehicles apart and hammering weapons into blunt useless objects. Careening through residential areas, uprooting trees, flipping over cars, and bellowing the Earth deaf.  
  
There was nothing here. Just the chaos of his enormous green self. No substance, all flash.  
  
Loki opened his eyes, and the Hulk did the same, coming back to himself and howling at the dark prince in anger. Loki had violated his mind, and even as simple a creature as he was, he knew it. And he wasn't happy. Spittle flew onto the trickster's face and he wiped it casually away.  
  
"Okay... That was freaky. Right?" Stark turned to Dr Strange for support before addressing Loki. "I mean, he went under just as you did and then you both came back at the same time. And he... doesn't look like his normal jolly self. What gives, Bullwinkle?"  
"He's peering through his memories. Aren't you?" The doctor pinned Loki with an accusatory look. "That's a little underhanded to say the least."  
"Yes, but effective. Do you have any better ideas?" He didn't pause for long, fearful of an actual answer. "No? Then let me work. In peace."  
  
Strange fixed him with a belligerent stare but eventually gave up, shrugging his shoulders and pulling a dumbfounded and irritated Tony back through a fiery portal with a promise to return to check up on them shortly.

  
  
At last, they were alone. No longer any need for showmanship and artifice. Loki glared at the Hulk, who roared and glared back.

"And now, my friend, we find what's at your fetid, rotten center." He sneered menacingly and tried to think of how best to escalate. It wasn't yet time for blood. Pain would still work. Something inside told Loki this wouldn't be easy. He grasped his left pinky with his right hand. "I would say 'prepare yourself', but it will do no good," he cast the sneered threat at the Hulk more for his own benefit, to brace himself for the pain than for any other reason. In one swift movement, he twisted his pinky backwards onto the flat of his hand, snapping the bone and joint into pieces. The pain was sharp and swift and the signet greedily sucked the offering down.  
  
Loki closed his eyes and shifted towards the murky quicksand at the center of Banner's brain. Between the chaos of the Hulk and the placidity of happy human memories. The quicksand boiled under his hands, nearly alive. 

There was something here. He plunged his pale fingers into it and pulled until a memory, syrupy and putrid, devoured him entirely.

  
  
***


	4. Chapter 4

Banner was on his hands and knees, staring at the pavement. He, or Loki, or both men simultaneously, shook his head to clear it. He or they, realized all at once that: they were naked, bone exhausted, and surrounded by aimed weaponry. Not good.  
  
He sat back on his haunches, and raised his palms. Surrendering. He was wrestled roughly back down to the ground by some nameless man, his face pressed to the pebbled surface below.   
  
"Sergeant, this is Pigeonhole. We have the subject under control."  
"D-did I hurt anyone?" Loki felt himself ask through Bruce's lips as he was dragged roughly upright, his hands bound behind his back.  
"Just half of Harlem," came the terse reply. He looked around, surveying his own damage.   
  
Loki was astonished. Buildings and cars lay in piles of rubble and twisted metal, like some Midgardian version of a battlefield. _This_ was what the beast was capable of? It was impressive, and he mildly smirked in the back of his mind as Banner's body was dragged without resistance into the back of an armored vehicle. The soldiers exited and the doors were shut upon him, leaving him in blackened silence, heavy with the smell of hot sweating metal and human fear.  
  
The memory continued, the blackened vehicle bouncing along roads for a good distance until the doors were thrown open to dark night punctuated by bright floodlights. He was dragged unceremoniously out of the vehicle, slightly refreshed and plainly resistant now, but still unclothed. They had arrived at some sort of military base or penitentiary. Midgardian buildings looked so drab, basic, and similar. It was impossible to differentiate.  
  
His body was sweating now, breathing in and out rapidly. Adrenaline coursed through his veins, one pitiable human heart ushering it through his limbs frenetically. Over white tile, down long corridors, under harsh fluorescent lights he was forcefully and swiftly led. It was clear that Bruce was trying to hold another transformation back, so soon after the last. But the effort was... for his captor's benefit? Not for his own? Loki balked at the realization. This made no sense. Even from his slightly separated perspective, both through time and the fog of memory, Loki could tell the men meant to do Bruce harm. Perhaps _extreme_ harm. Why wasn't he fighting back?!  
  
At last, his body was deposited in a square white room and he was strapped without a word to a cold metal table. The chill was jarring even now.   
  
The fear. Oh, Norns. The fear was _palpable_.   
  
He couldn't move his limbs. He couldn't move his head. And the Hulk was screaming to be let loose. Clawing in disbelief at Banner's denial.  
  
"Well, Doctor Banner, you've caused us a great deal of trouble today. What do you have to say for yourself? Half the city is in ruins, countless missing, unknown numbers dead. This is all your fault." A cold voice spoke from above, safely disconnected through physical distance and electronics. "Hmm? What is your excuse?"  
"I-I have none." His/their voice broke. Tears from stress, terror, and guilt coursing down his cheeks. "Please, _please_ help me. Please help me stop this. I can't do this again. All those innocent lives..."  
"Not to worry. You're in our hands now." At an unseen signal, another man approached, clad in a protection suit meant for 'training' attack dogs. Odd. What protection could the man hope it would offer against the Hulk, really? But the frightened man that caged the beast was not fighting back at all. Not even as the other man's gloved hands produced a syringe and sunk it deep into his arm. Not even when that hand now lifted a rib-spreader into his vision and the other reached purposefully for a bone saw, turned it on, and brought it down on his bare chest...

***

  
Loki pulled out of the memory with shocking abruptness. His head spun, trying to re-orient himself. Holy Hel. _That_ was the caliber of memory this creature had locked in his head?! He took a minute to settle his own racing heart and gauge whether or not he truly wanted to continue. The Hulk was coming out of it now too. Realizing he'd been forced to re-live his brutal trauma again at Loki's bidding, he was in a fit of pique. He bellowed at the demi-god, teeth gnashing at empty space, flinging specks of saliva across empty space to splatter with rage across his pale face.  
  
"Yes... _Understood_ , creature. Not your favorite pastime. Well then, in our next exercise, perhaps you shouldn't provide me with such verdant fodder?" He masked a shudder with a haughty huff. "It _is_ your fault, after all." This didn't settle the beast in the least.  
  
Loki took a brief moment to swallow down his own agitation, survey the cosmos, and regain his composure. The distant stars bathed his face with feeble light. His bent and broken finger still throbbed at the edge of his awareness. But it was only a small pain. Certainly in comparison with... The memory had brought him back in a small way to the abattoir where Thanos had flayed him open, once upon a time.   
  
A long time ago. But never long enough...  
  
He took a deep breath, forcing it down and spinning in the void to face the creature again.   
  
"Once more? Let's keep on pace. What is the _source_ of your agitation?" As bad as that memory was, Loki could feel it was too old, too scarred over to be responsible for the Hulk's recent rage.  
  
More pain was required. More than simply breaking a finger bone. The signet was greedy. Loki took a deep breath as he grasped his left hand in his right. This would have to be quick to be successful.   
  
He wrenched his left hand in a circle, to the breaking point, but paused when the ligaments screamed. 

No, _no, push it._ Be done with it, heal yourself later, he told himself. Remember the reward promised. Push now! And he did, twisting his left hand until the joints pulled away from the bones with a sickening crack and his palm was facing the wrong side of his arm.  
  
Norns, the pain! His broken wrist lolled uselessly, but he could feel success in the way the signet burned around his finger and he was sucked back into the abyss of Banner's memories. From the quicksand and murk, he pulled another into his mind. This one was thin like glass candy, worn brittle over time. 

No, no - the wrong one. Loki knew it already. It was too old. It was all wrong.   
  
But it was too late all the same.  
  


  
***


	5. Chapter 5

  
Loki stared out the frosted window on Bruce's tiptoes. He could barely see over the bottom frame. Small body. Young, far too young. He cursed himself while little Bruce waited patiently for someone.  
  
"Brucie-pie, come finish your dinner. You know he'll be late tonight." But Bruce didn't care, his empty stomach forgotten in the face of hopeful expectation. It wasn't long before his youthful patience was rewarded. A car pulled into the driveway and his face broke into a smile.   
"He's here, dad's home!" The woman behind him sighed. A long-suffering sigh that was only recognized through sufficient experience as one of helpless resignation. Of this, young Bruce knew nothing, but Loki knew. And his trepidation grew. The amount of pain needed to elicit this memory was a fairly plain indication that nothing good would come.   
  
The elder Banner opened the front door abruptly, letting the cold wind into their nondescript Midgardian abode. He was in his cups, that was plain. Young Bruce knew nothing of such adult vices and barreled headlong towards his legs, arms outstretched to wrap his father in an embrace of youthful innocence. He was met with drunk knuckles to the top of his head, and kicked back onto the floor.  
  
And Loki, despite all his misdeeds, wished he could either backhand the infuriating cur or simply hide his gaze behind his own fingers. But he could do neither from his spectator position. No, this type of magic demanded observation with a devastating immediacy. He couldn't look away from the memory. He couldn't speed it up. The whole terrible sight was burned irrevocably into his eyes.   
  
Bruce's bright smile was gone, replaced with unshed tears. His father rounded on his slight figure, slapping and kicking and picking him up off the ground and bodily shaking him. His mother was a distant voice begging the elder Banner to stop, pulling at him with feeble, ineffective arms.  
  
The pain of the beating was nothing the young boy had ever experienced before. Despite that, and somehow worse, was the betrayal. The feeling, no the _knowledge_ , that he'd done something wrong to make his father so angry. That it was his fault. That he deserved it all. That he was wrong, evil, _unwanted_ , as his father spit those exact words in his face.   
  
He believed them. A blight, an anchor, a burden, a chain, a monster in waiting. Unwanted. Unneeded. Nothing.  
  
Loki swam back from the memory with his broken hands, pulling until he had surfaced into his own skin. 

  
  
***

  
  
He turned from the Hulk as the beast roared at him, violated and angry. Loki spun and faced the stars and hid the wetness in his eyes that threatened to trickle down his face. He was affected, but he'd do his damnedest to bite it down.   
  
The loss of innocence. Of happiness. He'd been there, too. Hearing those same words from his father. No, not his father. From _Odin_.  
  
Unwanted. A puppet. A plaything. A burden. A shame.  
  
And now Odin was punishing him even while Loki was out of the dungeons and out of his grasp. Kept on a long leash yes, but irrevocably under the king of the gods' control. He hadn't even seen the enshrinement of his mother's remains among the stars. She had joined the valiant in Valhalla and her spirit gave birth to a new constellation. Or so he'd been told. He hadn't been allowed to attend her memorial. To pay his respects to the woman who, perhaps not by birth, but more so due to the place in his heart, was thoroughly his mother.  
  
She'd taught him All Speak. How to walk, how to run, how to use a bow and arrow. How to call the magic of the universe to him, how to make it dance. All Odin had done was taught him how to lie.  
  
God of Lies... Huh. Hadn't Odin bested him even at that?  
  
Frigga. He allowed her name to escape his lips into the void like a benediction before he took a deep breath, composed himself, and turned to face the creature. The Hulk had calmed somewhat as well.  
  
"Give me _something_ I can work with, you foul beast," he spat. "No more childhood trauma. No more meaningless fantasies. I have _a task_ and the less time I spend above this sphere, the happier we shall both be."   
  
Fresh pain was needed. Loki's left hand was still a jagged mess, so instead he summoned a blade between the fingers of his other. He could heal all these wounds in time. It was a matter of staying functional in the interim. He raised the knife to his left ear, and sliced it away in one clean stroke before the agony condensed.  
  
To his credit, he didn't scream. The sharp pain slid between his clenched teeth in the form of a pained groan. But the signet was happy, and that was all that mattered. Loki shut his eyes and dove back into the quagmire of memories. Something cold and dark and slimy slid over his shoulder, and he was gone.

  
  
***


	6. Chapter 6

  
Bright sun. Sweltering heat. Humans gathered in dark, drab clothing. Standing close, but not touching. Silent. 

Loki found himself in the midst of some strange mortal ritual, in Bruce's adolescent body. Awkward from all angles and suffused with an itchy energy that Loki could still recognize from his own youth centuries ago.  
  
He didn't want to be here. Neither Bruce nor Loki. Loki because he was painfully aware that despite the significant sacrifice he'd offered the signet, he was _again_ trapped in a memory which likely had little to do with Banner's recent transformation. Bruce simply wanted out of these formal clothes. Away from these strangers. He wanted to run rather than stay standing still. His legs twitched with anxiety and nerves.

He didn't want to be here. Stifled under social expectations and adult mores. Stuck staring at anything and nothing, but certainly not at a long, dark, rectangular object being lowered into a hole dug hastily in the ground.  
  
The sun was shining bright, but Loki could feel it raining in Bruce's chest. As if there would never be another sunny day again. As if he were destined to be perpetually sodden and damp from this point forward. Alone.  
  
Indeed, even though the mourning throng was numerous, the feeling of isolation was pervasive. There were no friends shoulder to shoulder. No droopy aunts grasping his hand. His hands grasped each other for comfort instead. There was no mother's palm rubbing reassuring circles on his formally clothed back. No paternal arm draped over his shoulders. It was as if this slice of dreary Ohio summer encapsulated and foretold the rest of his miserable life.  
  
And then Loki saw it. As the rectangular object descended into the soil, a plinth of polished stone behind became visible. It was freshly carved with the words: 'Rebecca Banner, beloved wife and mother'.  
  
_Mother_. Norns. That's why the beast's mother wasn't here. Well, she was... but- That's why this memory was saturated with the emotions of a lost fawn, abandoned to the wilds. Alone to face gnashing teeth and scraping claws.  
  
As if by cue, the tears fell from Bruce's eyes. He felt the sharp teenage shame at showing emotion, but it couldn't be helped. His mother. _Gone_. And in that moment, Loki knew the reason why his father wasn't here, either. What the whispered gossip was that circled through the gathered mourners. Despite himself, Loki couldn't help the pang of sympathy that welled up in the space in his chest where his heart had once been.   
  
Brian Banner had killed Rebecca. 

Mother killed by father. Son orphaned all at once between a dead woman and a killer who was figuratively dead to Bruce.   
  
All of this at such a young age... Teenage Bruce bit his lip to try and stop the tears but it was no use. And there was no comforting arm to ease his grief. Not even from the anonymous social worker who appeared at his side as if by magic, a portent of the lonely days ahead.

  
  
***  
  


Loki shook himself out of the memory. There was nothing more to be gleaned there, and what he'd seen did absolutely nothing to tell the tale of the Hulk's current tirade. Perhaps the grief was fuel for Banner at one point. Perhaps it was the buried foundation of this transformation, but it was not the dry tinder that made the green beast scream across empty space in his direction. He was violated anew and ever more angry with each passing experience.  
  
"Direct me _correctly_ , beast. When you do, this weary task shall be at an end," he spat. "Do you think I _enjoy_ wallowing in mortal memories?" Loki shook his intact hand for effect, as if to shake off the mud of that sodden hole where Banner's mother lay rotting.  
  
What next? There were so many appendages he could still mutilate to feed the signet's bottomless appetite. But he _really_ wanted this to end.  
  
He still had a hand. And teeth. His sharp teeth. With a thought, he disapparated the brace cladding his forearm. Loki brought the pale flesh to his mouth and called the slimmest sliver of his Jotun heritage out. His true form sharpened the tips of his incisors. His glistening fangs reflected the monster he truly was at his core. 

Disgusted with himself, with Banner, with this whole miserably unsettled situation, he bit down. Hard. Carving flesh out of his forearm before he realized the extent of damage he'd wrought on himself. The blood from his rent flesh pooled into globules and floated away on the barest agitation.   
  
The signet was perversely happy. And warm. And it opened the connection between the two men and before Loki could even pick one to pursue, the signet chose for him and forced a thick, living tentacle of memory between his pursed lips, over his tongue, panicking now, down his throat, until the sensation choked him blind.  
  


***


	7. Chapter 7

  
Warm lips on his. Fingers threading through his hair. A chest pressed _insistently_ to his own.  
  
The sensory whiplash was so disorienting, Loki had to metaphorically shake his head to clear it. He could feel Banner's human body reacting, heat threading through his arteries and veins as if his whole being was on fire. Bruce kissed back, tentative but ardent while the other used their skill to urge his lips wide, brushing tongues, fingernails scratching lightly over his scalp, hips grinding through jeans, closer.   
  
Oh god, all at once! The sensations were overwhelming but delicious. He was so inept, being guided by a master. It was so, so good. Oh _Norns_ , it was so good.  
  
The immediacy of the sensations was the only thing filling his/their mind. Loki had been bracing for and expecting more pain. This interlude was wholly unexpected. He felt like a voyeur, threading through Banner's intimate memories like this and... he was intrigued. And it felt _good_ , despite the interaction's Midgardian shortcomings. Loki wouldn't admit it, but it had been a long time since he'd been engaged this way himself. For reasons mostly of his own choosing.  
  
But this... A slap in the face. A reminder of what true passion was like. However, it wasn't just the physical sensations associated with being snogged breathless. Banner _cared_ about this person. And he was convinced they cared about him too.   
  
Cared? _Coward_. Call it by name.   
  
Love.   
  
That's what was feeding the buzzing sound in his/their brain, the electric fire running through nerves and veins.  
  
The other person pulled the t-shirt over Bruce's head and off. Warm pads of fingers ran down his chest, dappled lightly with hair - exploring, needing. Then they regrettably broke the kiss and pulled off their own shirt. It was a woman, Loki could tell that now. Her ample figure was finally unconstrained and Banner leaned down to pepper her soft breasts with kisses.  
  
"Oh _Bruce_ ," she whispered and suddenly Loki was aware of just how erect the human was. And how quickly he'd gotten there, too. His pulse echoed his increased interest as one hand cupped her bosom. So soft, so warm. His to touch, to take... The other hand wound around her waist, playing with the edge of her jeans. It would be mere moments before they were off too. He wanted them gone. Wanted to feel Banner's hands on her body, wanted to feel Banner's reactions to her flesh.  
  
An electronic beeping quelled his motions, mid-grasp, mid-kiss. Loki felt Bruce's eyebrows knit together and a moan of desperate frustration slipped through his mouth into hers. She paused in reaction to his utter stillness.  
  
"Bruce, what's wrong?" Her voice was so plaintive, so innocent. Loki hadn't any idea what words would fall out of Bruce's mouth, but he could feel the shame well up inside of his chest.  
"I-I can't. Betty... I'm sorry."  
"Why, Bruce? _Why?_ It's just us now. There's no one here, no one to stop us, no one to tell us no." She resumed kissing him and the electronic beeps continued steadily, urgently. Bruce pushed her away again.  
"I... It's me, _it's me._ If I get too excited, I'll change. I-I, I can't take that risk. Not with you. _Oh god_ , I won't hurt you, _I can't._ " The fear was palpable now, the inevitable outcome of Bruce's heart racing out of control, of transforming, of maiming this woman. All of these thoughts were plastered inside his head in rapid succession. It sent the pitch of the electronic beeping up another octave and Banner instinctively began the breathing exercises that were second nature to him now.   
  
In, 2, 3, 4. Out, 2, 3, 4.   
  
"What? That makes no sense." She was insistent, flatly excited herself and unwilling to believe the awful truth. "You will _be fine_. I will be fine. Just _kiss_ me." And she moved to embrace him again but Banner, his heart tearing in two, pushed her away.  
"Betty. I can't. _I just can't._ And I can't risk losing you. Not even for... for this," he motioned between the two of them. "No matter how much I _want it_. No matter how much I _need you_." He struggled to put into words what he barely dared to think.  
  
That they couldn't touch. They couldn't kiss. They couldn't make love.   
That he could never be intimate with her or with anyone. Ever again.   
  
The beeping stopped. His erection was completely gone. His happiness evaporated. The desire was mercilessly bled from his body.  
  
The soul-crushing weight of his isolation truly settled on his shoulders then. The hard finality smacking him in the face. He was cursed. Bruce found his shirt and pulled it on, just to give his hands something to do.  
  
"I'll- I'll give you some space. I'm sorry." He ran his fingers through his hair in a nervous gesture. "I-I'll get some fresh air. A-and we'll get back on the road first thing in the morning." He jerked his focus back to the present, back to the fragility of their situation, on the run in a seedy motel room.  
She sighed, giving up for now. Her voice was plaintive, not needy.  
"Bruce... please stay."   
  
Please. That word, like a prayer. Like a balm to his ears. But he was no god. And there was no angel watching over him. 

A cursed life. Just like his father always said.  
  
"I..." He had no answer for please. No answer for emotional entreaties. There was only the cold hard dispassionate logic that imprisoned him, body and soul. He opened and walked through the door, no answer on his lips. Her pleas died abandoned on his ears. He would have to grow armor against her too. Even her. He had to harden his heart. It was all he could do. The alternative was unfathomable, unacceptable.

  
  
***

  
  
Loki surfaced into his own body as if from a dream. The Hulk floated some yards away, glaring at him now. He didn't scream as before, didn't howl and thrash in impotent anger. He was sullen, reflecting how Loki felt inside.  
  
"I ask _one thing_ from you. _One_ thing. Instead, you lead me by the nose like some loutish sow!" He couldn't let Banner know how the memory impacted him. "Do you perceive me as some _mindless animal_ to game with?!" he screamed. Loki's false anger painted well over the implanted feelings of despair and isolation that Banner had left him with. The anger flooded him and he welcomed it, inhaling it greedily. He could do something with anger. He had no use for hopelessness, shame, depression, and despair.  
  
Oh _Idunn_ , but he'd _felt_ it. How alone Banner really was. How any hope of companionship was only superficial and temporary. His smiles, only for show.   
  
Then... what was his attachment to the Agent Romanov? Superficial as well? Perhaps it was a game he played with himself. Perhaps she didn't know his past and his limitations. Perhaps it was engineered that way: she was a toy Banner could amuse himself with, provided she stayed at arm's length.   
  
Loki chuckled half-heartedly to himself. Lies. More lies. First Odin, now Banner, so adept at spinning webs for others and for himself.  
  
_That_ thought made him angry again. Truly. He gratefully shed the cloak of despair and turned his thoughts to his next plan.  
  
Burns should please the signet. Great weeping welts, tender pink flesh boiled open. He evoked a flame from thin air and guided it to his right foot. He enlarged it only a little. It wouldn't do to consume all their captive oxygen in his attempt. He let the fire encapsulate his boot. Only his boot.  
  
The heat was a buzzing fly at first. Irritating, but no more. Then it grew, swiftly, into unstoppable pain that seared through his skin, his flesh, down to the bone. Loki was not a being built of sunshine and warmth, but of stone-deep ice and cold. Fire was antithetic to his very nature. It ate away at him like an acid, hungry and pitiless. Loki did scream then and thankfully spared a thought to extinguish the fire in the moment before he felt the signet respond with a curious tinge. It wasn't only blood he was offering, but bubbled skin, charred muscle, and as always, pure unblemished pain.  
  
The chasm of Banner's mind slid open to him and he snatched at a blackened spiderweb of memory just before the pain threatened to pull him under entirely.  
  


***


	8. Chapter 8

  
  
  
He was running. Or rather, trying to jog at a swift pace that would not elevate his heart rate unduly. A woman kept glancing back at him, her eyes pleading. But Loki knew Banner wasn't chasing her through the throng of people going about their daily lives, he was following her as she urgently beckoned him.  
  
"Please hurry," she begged. But he was already following as fast as he could, clutching his bag of tools and collected medicines. It wasn't easy running through the busy streets of eastern India, the high summer heat and the press of people and autos and street cats and chickens always underfoot. It was hot and dusty and the time of year when people became desperate. The monsoons were still a month away, easily, and water was as precious a commodity as the thin gold chain around her neck.  
  
They reached and entered a small shack constructed in an alley between two towering houses. Hers was like a junkyard dollhouse version of the others which bracketed it, cobbled together with dented sheets of corrugated steel. He ducked inside and saw the reason for her worry.   
  
A small child was sprawled on the floor, his mouth open slightly, panting, delirious. The contusion on his head was swelling and grotesque. His blood ran in rivulets down his face, onto the hard-packed clay of the floor.  
  
"He was playing outside with his friends and wasn't looking and an auto ran into him and now he's bleeding and I don't know what to do and the aunties said you were a doctor and you could help and please I don't have any money but he's all I have in the world, and oh gods, he's my baby boy, please help him can you?" her flood of words drew to a close as the child took a gasping breath, her gaze drawn back like a magnet.  
"Uh... I not understand. I doctor. I help?" Bruce gestured at the boy and his mother shuffled back to give him space. Loki quickly realized that the All Speak worked even in memories, but Banner did not have that luxury. The doctor had only begun to grasp this new language.   
  
His deft fingers moved swiftly over the boy's head, pushing his hair out of the way to gauge the extent of the wound. It was hard to determine when it bled so steadily. Cranial trauma was always like that, blood flowing freer than elsewhere. He had to feel gingerly with his fingers, coating them in blood as he touched the ragged edge of the cut that extended from his brow to the apex of his head. But it wasn't just torn skin, his fingers met with something harder, splintered and freely moving. Bone.  
  
It was as if a magic spell had been cast. As soon as Bruce came to understand how grievous his injuries were, the boy's breathing became shallow, swift. His eyes fluttered closed and his mother screamed.  
"Oh gods, oh _gods_ , Kamran, _no!_ Wake up! _My boy!_ "  
"Hospital. Hospital! I needs." Bruce tried to communicate as he checked first for his breathing and next for a pulse. Both were thready, too weak. No, a hospital wouldn't come fast enough for the boy and he realized it with sickening certainty. All of the power was stolen from his hands as he watched, helpless. The small boy, skinny for his age but wiry and strong despite their poverty. A knotted string bracelet on one wrist for luck. A stick and ball cast aside at the edge of the room. A plush tiger, worn and dirty, but well loved.  
  
Oh _god_ , he couldn't... he couldn't stay here. Tears flooded his eyes and he blinked them back. He wanted so badly to run but he couldn't just abandon the mother, even as useless as he was.   
  
So Bruce went about the business of looking busy, testing his pulse, the pallor of his cheeks, lifting his eyelids and checking his pupils. All signs showed that the boy was dying a drop at a time. He knew. His mother knew too. But she didn't want to believe and continued to cradle one of his small hands in both of hers, careening from cooing soothing pleasantries to begging and pleading with him to stay, to just open his eyes, to just smile at her again. Please oh gods, please, _please_.  
  
Bruce didn't know the words she was sometimes whispering, sometimes screaming, but language was irrelevant. A parent needs no translation for their grief.  
  
The boy took a last breath and his limbs grew slack, untethered, as she drew him into her arms. Her wail pierced Bruce to the core and he did cry then, tears dripping down his face like the rain this land so desperately needed.  
  
He'd failed them. She entreated him in her hour of need and he'd failed. Utterly. He let the boy die. He was no medical doctor! He was only _playing_ at curing coughs and bandaging cuts because it kept his hands busy, and his stomach full, and it allowed him to slip benignly under the protective cover of society and away from the prying eyes that searched for him in every corner of the planet.  
  
And what had his play-acting gotten him now? A little boy, life stopped short. A wounded mother, whose heart would never heal. She wasted precious time running to find him because of the false reputation he'd built in the community. It was time she'd never get back and time that could have been spent finding a hospital. A _real_ doctor. Not some fake American savior who lied through his teeth to save his own skin.  
  
He stood, drew back the burlap door and stepped out of the hut in mourning to be greeted by a small silent group of women and boys. Relatives? Friends? All with tears in their eyes and baited breath, hoping for some balm from Bruce's lips. Some reason to hope despite the wails from the hut that pierced the air.  
"I... _no_." He couldn't put it into words, but he didn't need to. They broke down in sobs and cries and Bruce turned and ran as fast as his feet and heart would allow.

  
  
***

  
  
Loki tried and failed to harden himself, but the ache hit too close to home. The boy, some wretched Midgardian street rat of no importance. He didn't matter in the least. He was of no noble birth. His fate was not set in the stars.  
  
But he was _loved_. The love of a mother, desperate, grieving, broken. It pierced him through the core and brought a flood of unbidden memories to choke him.  
  
He'd _let_ Frigga die. Just let it happen as if she were of no consequence. As if she wasn't the one who anchored him, the one who'd taught him. The one who loved him as a foundling, as a mischievous boy, even as the saboteur of Asgard and the conqueror of worlds.   
  
But no. He hadn't just let it happen: _he'd been the one to cause it!_ When all she'd ever done had been for his benefit, even if he'd been too haughty and wounded and proud and self-centered and _willfully_ blind to see it.  
  
He set the Hulk spinning gently end over end with one outstretched finger, not deigning to turn and look at him. A distraction for the beast. A distraction so he wouldn't see Loki break down, tears flowing without hope of end. His lips trembled and his face fell, caving into itself in grief.   
  
He cried in great gasping breaths, in quiet sobs, in halting hitching gaps, until he felt as if all the water in the universe had passed through his eyes. He opened his lids after a time, worn and frayed from the energy the outburst had pulled from him. A cloud of water droplets orbited closely. The exhaust of his grief.  
  
Loki took a great cleansing breath. She was dead. It was a fact. Blubbering like a green child wouldn't change the past and it certainly wouldn't bring her back or undo his mistakes. With a flick of his wrist, he scattered the droplets throughout the prison-bubble he and the Hulk occupied.  
  
Time to get back to business. He turned back to see that the Hulk's rotating body had slightly slowed. Green eyes, squinting oddly, stared at him once during each revolution. The beast was quiet for once. Or perhaps he had been growing steadily more calm throughout their enterprise. Loki wasn't sure, but he had the feeling that he was missing something. Some puzzle piece.  
  
"Back to work, fiend. So much for the _pleasant_ interlude." Loki's voice seemed tired and strained, even to his own ears. What next? He magicked another blade from empty space. The pain in his throbbing face, foot, arm, hand, fingers, was draining his creativity.  
  
Instead, he simply lifted the hilt in his clenched fist and brought the point down swiftly on his right thigh. It was a sharp edge and the blade disappeared into his flesh, blood seeping from his arteries into the air. He bit his lip to prevent himself from screaming again, and the signet ate up both sources of blood and pain like a greedy child.   
  
Banner's mind opened to him once again and a watery mass of memory crept towards Loki, sliding over his face and suffocating him.  
  
  
  
***


	9. Chapter 9

  
Bruce woke, naked, in an open plain. Flat on his back, the bare soil under him exposed to the ice blue sky.  
  
His eyes were open now.   
  
His eyes were open.  
  
He _had_ eyes.  
  
He saw.  
  
He was _alive_.  
  
_Fuck_.  
  
...  
  
...  
  
He closed them again. The beginnings of a headache began to creep under his shut eyelids. He could feel. There was the cold ground at his back, and the fresh air up his nostrils, and the pervasive sensation of pain.  
  
He wasn't dead. Fuck, how he wished he was dead. Fuck, fuck, _fuck!_   
  
What had happened? What went wrong? In the blackness of his memory, he had a sensation of transformation, then of the cold bitter copper of the bullet over his tongue, passing between his lips, being spat out in blatant rejection.  
  
No. No, Banner. _Stupid_ Banner.  
  
The Hulk wouldn't let him die. He wouldn't allow it. He was more a prisoner now than ever. No matter which way he turned, he was either imprisoned by the military, by SHIELD, or by his own belligerent monster. He didn't even have the bliss and escape of death. All paths were cut off from him.  
  
Bruce cried silent tears across his cheeks into the barren cold ground. He wept until he started to shiver from the chill in the air and the heatsink of soil beneath him. He started to his feet as a dull thing, devoid of emotion. Trees were toppled outward around him.  
  
It was hopeless. There was no point in _trying_ , or searching for a cure. There was only breathing in and out. The beat of his own rotting heart. The throb of his own cursed veins.  
  
It was pointless. And like that, a switch flipped in his head. And a whole section of his brain was sliced off, deadened, unplugged. He didn't care. They couldn't make him care. Hulk couldn't make him care. Bruce gave up at a new level entirely. Giving up on life was to embrace death, but giving up on both was to be totally devoid of a soul.  
  
That's what Bruce felt like now. Empty and void. As he stood and dusted off his thighs, he felt detached. A mimicry of himself, pantomiming around in his limbs. He was both the actor and the audience in his own theatre. He watched himself from the outside.  
  
There was no point in caring anymore. He would allow this body to crate him around in a imitation of life, of caring, until his heart finally decayed away and his brain shut down. Not even the Hulk could stop the inevitable decline of mortality.  
  
And Bruce smiled at that. A hollow smile. The only smile he could imagine his face would ever bear again.

  
  
***

  
  
Loki opened his eyes slowly, coming back to himself. He felt Bruce's bare desperation and the abject emptiness that followed.   
  
He felt... pity for the doctor? No, not pity. _Empathy?_   
Perhaps.  
  
Loki didn't want to examine it too closely. It was a repressive, suffocating feeling that shrouded him like a cold, lead weight. And above all, it was cloyingly familiar.   
  
Rather than dwell on it, as he knew he certainly would, Loki threw it away forcefully and shook his head to clear it.

He risked a glance over at the Hulk, who was silent and still but for the snarl on his lips he was desperately trying to mask. That was odd. The creature of incarnate rage, trying to stifle his irritation? It was implausible, but the evidence was right in front of Loki's face.  
  
Maybe they were getting somewhere, after all.  
  
"Are you finally ready to capitulate?" He stared the green beast dead in his eyes, steady despite his considerable wounds. He expected no answer from the dumb, sullen monster.  
"Hulk want rest." Loki's eyebrows raised at that. It was the first words he'd heard spoken by the beast, at least since his defeat at green hands within Stark's citadel. Those haughty words of a mindless beast who'd brought a 'puny' god low.  
  
Loki ground his teeth at that thought. Anger. He always worked best with a sharp dose of it.   
  
But the beast wasn't mindless after all, was he? There were so many horrible memories he'd had to swim through. Perhaps this was it. Perhaps Banner and the creature were admitting defeat. Well then, _no time like the present_. His wounds leaked slowly into the captive air, floating in the absence of gravity.  
  
" _Rest?_ There's no rest yet. Give me want I want, creature. _The_ memory. The one. Why does Banner rage so? Why won't you retreat?" He snatched the dagger from where it floated nearby. "Surrender. It's easy. Give me your demons and I will let you rest!" He raised the point and stabbed the blade into his leg again, intersecting the first cut and multiplying the stream of blood that erupted from his thigh. He pulled the blade back and stabbed again. And again. 

The pain was sharp with each thrust but more or less bearable now. Perhaps only because of his desperation and fatigue. He hadn't the capacity to ruminate on it. His leg was a steady throbbing ache that blistered into fire with each heartbeat. He stabbed at his thigh again and again. The ring on his finger gorged on the buffet of pain and pried open Banner's mind once again. 

It was no longer bisected into dark areas of quicksand and spikes but was one concise object. Round and plump like a fruit ready for harvest. But when Loki reached for the black orb of memory, it slipped into a spongy mess that disintegrated under his fingers. Rotten gel covered his hand and an unseen force pushed his head under the black, viscous surface of memory.

  
  
***


	10. Chapter 10

Bruce pushed his glasses up his nose with one finger. He was walking down a corridor lined with metal compartments, the floor under his feet shiny and polished. Children were walking the opposite direction. It was if he was swimming upriver through a sea of small humans.   
  
He turned the corner and entered a room. A science lab. There was just one boy in the room, hunched over his studies, working earnestly.  
"Bobby," he called and the boy looked up, startled.  
"Mr Banner, _please_... just give me ten more minutes." Bruce crossed his arms over his chest and sighed, but Loki could tell from the smile threatening to quirk his lips that it was all for show.   
"Nine minutes. Then I _need_ you to turn in your test." He glanced down, noticing the boy had left the valve to his bunsen burner open. "Don't forget to run through the five safety checks before you start," he said pointedly. The boy didn't glance up from his papers. " _Bobby_ ," Bruce called.  
"Yes, Mr Banner?"  
"Don't forget the safety checks, Bobby," he repeated and turned for the door. "I'll be back in eight minutes", he chuckled softly and walked back down the corridor, now devoid of children.  
  
It was the end of the day's studies, Loki correctly reasoned. But when had Bruce been a teacher? He walked until he reached an office of sorts. Bruce lifted his satchel from a hook on the wall and began busying himself with collecting his effects. He fully intended to give Bobby another ten minutes, not eight. His favoritism wasn't fair to the other students, but Bobby tried so hard. He wasn't naturally gifted like some children, but he applied himself rather than simply settling for the grade he'd earned. A feeling condensed in Bruce's chest akin to some misplaced fatherly pride. Loki tried not to gag at the sentiment that was flooding through Bruce's veins. Anything resembling a normal parental relationship garnered his suspicion and derision.  
  
Bruce's pocket buzzed and he pulled his phone from his jeans. It was a Stark Phone. Loki was vaguely familiar with the gaudy bauble Thor also carried.   
  
Then... this memory was recent. Recent meant...  
Loki quashed his hopes before they could bloom.   
  
Bruce checked the text from Tony and pocketed the phone without responding. He hated being tethered, but appreciated the friendliness that Stark appeared to show him. He was wary of these sentimental or perhaps superficial attachments.  
  
Bruce frowned. But maybe he shouldn't be so guarded around Tony. Maybe his offering was genuine. It was so hard for Bruce to tell after so many betrayals. After being on the run for nearly a decade. Always watching his back. But Tony... he was many things, but not seditious. He appeared to go out of his way to be an open book around Bruce. It was odd-  
  
The pictures on the wall rattled lightly and a muffled thud disturbed the dust under the closed door. Bruce was pulled out of his reverie slightly, brow askew. Strange.  
  
After the space of a breath an electronic shriek erupted above his head. It took Bruce a moment to realize it was the fire alarm. It took him one more moment to piece it all together.  
  
_Bobby._  
  
He turned for the door, wrenching the knob and throwing it open. He ran down the corridor to see miasma of grey smoke spilling out of the open lab door beyond.  
  
No... No, no, _no!_  
  
His feet flew. His body was of no consequence. He ran as fast as his legs were capable. He reached the door and threw himself inside. The fire was largely out, having spent itself in one fantastic explosion that knocked over stools, blew out the windows, and broke the chalkboard on the floor. Papers and books were thrown about, still burning. At the epicenter was a charred mass of black and red exposed flesh, stone still, oozing blood.  
  
No.  
No!!  
  
The body looked very little like a young boy anymore. It was too mangled. The bulk was more charcoal than human. Bruce fell to his knees, legs giving out.  
  
No, no, not here, _not this..._  
  
It was always the Hulk that hurt and maimed and killed. He could always blame it on the Other Guy and force his guilt into a dark corner reserved for the monster. But not now. This was his handiwork. Bruce. Bruce alone.  
  
How could he have let this happen? He told Bobby 'be safe' and 'use the checklist'. But Bobby was so focused on getting the test done, on getting a good grade. What did he expect? He was supposed to be the responsible one here, the adult, but he'd left the boy alone in the lab with an open gas valve. Thinking to teach him _a lesson?_ Thinking he'd realize and correct it.  
  
Fuck. It was all his fault!  
Oh, that bastard. His father. He'd been right all along. There was only one monster.  
He was the monster. Bruce, not Hulk.   
  
_Bruce_ had done it. Fuck. There was no escaping himself. He was a murderer. A fiend! The vilest beast! And he couldn't even end his own life. He couldn't stop himself, beast or man.  
  
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck! He gripped his head in his hands and screamed. By the time his lungs were out of air, the scream had turned to a roar, and his hands had turned from pale to green. 

But they were still bathed in blood.

  
  
***

  
  
Loki opened his eyes slowly and fixed them steadily on Bruce.  
  
Bruce.  
  
The Hulk was nowhere to be seen. He had reverted. _Finally._  
  
The realization was enough to sequester any responsive thoughts to Bruce's horrific memory to the back of Loki's mind. The doctor's dark curls floated around his head and he clutched his over-large shorts around his slight form.  
"W-where am I?" It was apparent his senses were being overwhelmed. Finding no ground under his feet, no fixed point, nothing steady to grasp. The blue planet and its moon hung in the perpetual night on opposing sides of the two floating men. It was only natural that the mortal would panic, but Loki had little patience for it and couldn't risk him transforming again in his agitation.  
  
And he was feeling a little lightheaded himself...  
  
He slung a fiber of power out to Bruce and pulled their bodies together. He gripped Bruce with his one good hand and gave the doctor something to anchor onto. The wildness in the man's eyes abated slightly, but they still darted from star to star, looking for something familiar. Anything.  
  
They stalled on Loki's face, piercing.  
  
"Where the _hell_ are we?"  
"The convergence between your planet and your moon. The point where gravity loses its power."  
"We're... we're at the L1 Lagrange point? _What...?_ Why?!"  
"Yes, that sounds right. I-" Loki closed his eyes as a wave of nausea hit him. _Idunn._ He was finally feeling the collective impact of all the trauma he'd inflicted on himself.  
  
"You don't look so good," Bruce stated the obvious. Loki thought of three vicious rejoinders, and swallowed them down, the energy leaking out of him more quickly than he was prepared for.  
"I haven't the time to explain," he whispered. "Just, just keep me awake," he muttered. His vision was blackening at the edges and his eyelids felt so heavy. No, no, no - this couldn't happen. "Keep me awake, or we both _perish_."  
  
Bruce's eyes flew open even wider, if possible. Keep Loki awake? The demi-god was a disjointed and bloody mess. It was a wonder he was even conscious, let alone coherent. Bruce shook him by the shoulders, which in the absence of gravity, served more to shake the two of them apart and back together than Loki alone.  
  
His pale eyelids opened slightly.  
"More..." he muttered in a haze. "Hit me."  
  
Bruce bit down his reluctance and slapped Loki across the jaw, gripping him with his other hand. Loki's lids fluttered open in mild shock.  
"Yes. Again."  
Bruce switched his grip, keeping them together, preventing the force of his hand from separating their bodies. There was nothing to swim against in the void. A push, a slap would generate an equal and opposite reaction, and swiftly they would be parted like colliding asteroids, trajectories tragically pushing them apart and into the abyss in opposite directions. Into the jaws of sure death. And for this moment, Bruce wanted to live.  
  
Gripping his shoulder, Bruce slapped him again. Loki's eyes opened a little further and he licked his lips.  
"Yes. I _have_ to stay awake. I'm keeping the oxygen tethered around us. At least- at least... until..." he drifted off and Bruce needed no further prompting to backhand him with force. Loki's jaw dropped open from the impact. He was awake indeed.  
  
"Better. Strange and Stark will be here soon, doubtless. Your kings keep constant watch of us from afar." He began to drift again. "They will know when... they will... know..." Bruce shook him again, but dissatisfied with the results, returned to cuffing him across his imperial cheekbones.   
  
Loki fixed him with the most potent stare he could muster, which wasn't impressive under the circumstances.   
"You must know one thing before your compatriots arrive." His lips pressed together in a firm line. "I am sorry. Simply that. I didn't know..." the words died in his throat. Not from the overwhelming pain and blood loss, but from the novel inability to articulate this thoughts. The impact Bruce's memories had on him.  
  
The void wavered in front of Loki's eyes.  
"Hit me again, you fool," he ordered, breath barely escaping his lips. "And don't stop again."  
  
Bruce decked him before he had the chance to contemplate what Loki's admission meant. He had a foreboding feeling, but decided he could examine it further after there was soil under their feet and blue sky overhead.  
  
He continued on, spacing his blows to give Loki time to recover, but not enough that his pupils would begin to lose their focus and roll back in his head. Enough pain to keep Loki awake, but not so much that he would slip entirely out of Bruce's grip.  
  
After agonizingly long minutes of not knowing when Loki would give out, when he would lose his mastery over their tenuous atmosphere, when the harsh vacuum of space would overtake them, finally a small blister of fire appeared in the blackness before Bruce.  
  
It grew swiftly into a spinning ring and the interior shimmered, showing a drab metal military corridor. Dr Strange and Tony half stepped, half floated through and with them came a bloom of fresh air. It disturbed the various objects floating around the two men. 

***

  
  
Tony and Strange shared a look as they took in the tableau. The Hulk had reverted to Bruce, barely clad in overstretched shorts that were floating around his waist. There was little modesty to be had with the looming specter of death.   
  
The good doctor was gripping Loki with one hand and backhanding him with the other. There was something prescriptive about his blows. As if he wasn't attacking the Trickster, but rather beating him for his own good. Maybe there was some truth to that. It was a question that could and would be asked later.  
  
Lastly, there was Loki. Gone was the regal and egotistic demi-god. His face was painted with the remnants of blood and dried tears. His mouth was ringed with blood as well. His hair was a hurricane disaster, soaked in gore and floating around his head like a demonic halo. His head was unbalanced, one ear carved away grotesquely and floating in the abyss. One foot was a blackened char, burned nearly beyond recognition. And his left hand was a horror show: bent and broken fingers, wrist flopping as if mangled by a hellhound. The arm above had been ravaged, huge chunks torn out and dancing with his severed ear in the null gravity.  
  
And blood. Blood everywhere. Streaming out of his leg, sliced into ribbons like deli meat.  
  
Bruce had paused in his methodical punishment of Loki's face as Tony and Stephen took in the scene before them. Loki's eyes slid shut in the interlude and his tenuous grip on their captive air slipped away.   
  
Everything happened at lightning speed. The oxygen was pulled out of Bruce's lungs and into the void surrounding them like a fire hose. Sound fled his ears with a loud pop, then absolute silence reigned. The chill of deep space speared his eyes and nose and mouth and he held onto Loki's inert form like a life preserver. He tried closing his eyes and shutting his lips, but there was no protective instinct that could shelter the human body from the brutality of pure vacuum.  
  
Then suddenly: there was something firm and warm underneath him. And muffled sounds in his ears, and bright light beyond his shut eyelids, and air in his nostrils. Bruce coughed and choked on blood and mercifully blacked out.

***


	11. Helgrid - Part I

  
  
  
Once upon a time, there was an elf named Helgrid. Helgrid was sharp and clever, but always left out during elvish gatherings and celebrations. He was too sharp, some would say. Too strange, others would whisper.  
  
One day, Helgrid was set upon by conniving elves who tripped him, robbed him, and tied him by his ankles to a small aspen tree. He'd had enough. He collected his belongings into a knapsack, stuffed his pockets with salted meat and cheese, and set out along the branches of the world.   
  
He traveled many long days and nights. Branches turned to limbs, limbs to trunk, and trunk to roots until the pathway fell out from under his feet and he found himself at the well Urðarbrunnr, where all roots slake their thirst.  
  
Three sisters were there, staring into the waters. One fresh and young as new snow. One wise and lithe and strong, in the fullness of life. And one crooked, wrinkled, and bent, hair brushing the ground. He approached them and spoke.  
"Oh lovely maidens three, I am a traveler lost his way. Deign to look upon me favorably and bless me, for I am a poor soul." It was two truths and one lie, and the first sister, youngest of all, spoke to the last truth.  
"You are indeed a poor soul, as your life will end wretchedly."  
"You have not lost your way, you are exactly where you hoped," proclaimed the second.  
"A lovely maiden I may have been, but your words are foolish now," said the eldest. "We shall not help you, though your life has been fraught with misery."  
  
Helgrid was angry now at their irrational rejection of his request for help.  
"You sisters see only a piece of the world, not the whole. And therefore I will take your power whether you agree or no." And like a flash, he stepped to them. The youngest and middle sister fled on swift feet. They possessed the foresight and clairvoyance to understand his intentions. But the eldest, slowed by age and by her gift to only see into the past, was too slow. He unsheathed a slender elvish knife and cut off a lock of her hair.  
  
She screamed, and her sisters too, but Helgrid was fast on his feet and ran away along the roots of the world, back to the trunk, back to the limbs, back to the branches where he could hide from their all-powerful gazes.  
  
With his prize, Helgrid journeyed to the realm of Niðavellir. He spied a half dozen dwarves bent over their glowing smithy. They sang as they toiled and Helgrid, knowing their strength far outnumbered his, wove his voice in with theirs while remaining hidden. His song grew and grew until it outsang their chanting. The dwarves stilled, silent and fearful.  
  
"Who goes there? Who dares approach the dwarves of Denket?" the leader asked, in a voice filled with phantom bravery. Helgrid remained hidden, knowing they would not fear his small elvish stature if seen. So he grew his voice until it was tall and towering like a troll and threw threats and curses at them until they bowed their heads shaking.  
  
"Oh great sorcerer, we bid you leave us poor dwarves. Let us give you a gift to assuage your rage." Helgrid smiled and watched as the dwarves plucked a fine gem from their horde. They poured molten mythril into a perfect circle and set the gem into its clutches, gripped by finely shaped metal talons. As the metal cooled and formed, Helgrid wafted the lock of Urd's hair on a breath. Her stolen hair settled into the ring, cemented by Helgrid's own trickery.  
  
The biggest dwarf picked up the ring, still warm to the touch, and held it over his head in offering.  
"Oh great wizard, we beseech you! Take this humble ring and curse us not, but leave us with your blessings." Helgrid took his chance and skipped from the shadows, unveiling that he was not a great warlock or a demon to be feared, but a slight elf with little real power past quickness and mischief. He snatched the ring from the dwarf's hand while he was still numb for a moment with surprise.  
"Thief! Coward!" they called, but Helgrid was already well down the path.  
  
The dwarves cast their cries to the heavens, but no one heard them except all-knowing Verdandi, middle sister to Urd. She told her sisters of Helgrid's scheming and they waited for vengeance with the patience only gods possess and bided their time.

***


	12. Chapter 12

  
  
Loki awoke in a Midgardian room. That was a good start. A better one than he'd expected. The mattress under him was stiff and thin, but not unlike many mortal accoutrements, lacking both substance and quality. There was a faint, rhythmic electronic beeping filling the air, and he looked askance at his prone arms. His left wrist and fingers were cast in some heavy clay and cloth bandage. Both arms were pierced with primitive medicinal needles and shackled to the bed he lay upon.   
  
So much for that.  
  
The needles withdrew themselves from his forearms which were stitched and stapled and slowly healing. The shackles dissolved into mist at his command and he sat up slowly, gripping his swimming head as the electronic beeps increased in frequency and pitch in response to his activity. Two things occurred to him at once. 

He _had to get out_ of this place as quickly as possible.  
And he was not fully healed nor in possession of his full arsenal of power. 

The knowledge of the second spurred the first to a higher priority. The best location on this realm he could think to safely convalesce was a remote place he'd visited several times before. However, the distance was unfathomable as he had no awareness of exactly _where_ he was.  
  
So he took the next best option and threw on a glamour of invisibility. It took more effort than he wanted to admit. When the door predictably opened moments later and the most heavily armed 'healers' he'd ever encountered stormed into the room, he sidled from his sequestered location near the door. Unseen, he glided into the hallway as best he could given his current condition. His foot was encased in the same clay and cloth bandage as his wrist. It was painful and heavy. He could only drag it. Normal walking was out of the realm of possibility for now. Especially given the punctured state of his upper thigh.  
  
As he stumbled forward, he was met with more banal Midgardian architecture. It was not unlike the hallway in Banner's last nightmare. Polished floor, mechanical lighting, metal walls. An alarm sounded, and he paused first to catch his breath, then to hold it as the nurses-cum-soldiers ran out of the room and scattered, searching for him.  
  
It was good to know exactly how far his goodwill with Fury extended. Apparently all of his previous transgressions far outweighed the recent good he'd done to subdue the Hulk.  
  
He had two priorities now. First: ascertaining his location and the distance and direction to Møysalen so he could recover, alone. Second, satisfying his curiosity: where had Banner gone? Knowledge was power and knowing the location and condition of such a powerful opponent could only benefit him in the future. Body and presence still veiled, let his consciousness expand through the solid walls and ceilings until he located a room where a great pulsating mass of electrons gathered. These mortals and their machines... It could only be a central repository of information and therefore control.  
  
He stole along the hallways, tripping up stairs and waiting patient beside doorways until they were opened by a mortal. His glamour held, and he slipped inside each threshold before it could close. At long last, he found the room where the electronic brain was held. There were four Midgardians in uniform, keenly eyeing screens of numbers and images. One of them showed the room where he had been held. It clearly was because of the disarray he'd left it in and dozen soldiers who filled it now.  
  
It pleased him to see the fear with which they reacted, but also trepidation at the swiftness of their response. No matter. Here he was, at the epicenter of their base. And, even as wounded as he was, they had no idea he was standing right behind them. Close enough to stir the hairs on the backs of their necks. Close enough to bind them with their own electronic cables. Close enough to slit their throats...  
  
His half-serious fantasy was pulled away by another screen in the corner of his eye. A prone human, short curly hair and stature easy to recognize. Banner. He too, was strapped down to a table, needles in his arms, but he was still, eyes closed. 'Found you', he thought to himself in a sly sense of triumph.   
  
Was Banner unconscious from being exposed to the void, or was he being kept that way by Fury and his cronies? Loki made a note of his location and stole back into the maze of corridors, intending to find out.  
  
Invisible, he again traversed the labyrinth and found Banner's door. Oddly enough, no one was guarding it at all. And it was the last stop on Loki's itinerary before exiting the complex entirely. So, he had no qualms about turning the knob himself and stepping through the door.   
  
He knew the humans' mechanical eyes would detect a door opening and closing on its own. And Loki knew enough about mortals to know they would not disregard the invisible evidence of his presence for long. He could not tarry.  
  
Banner was hooked to machines beeping in the same cadence as the ones in his own room. He was so still, so slight. He could easily be mistaken for any ordinary mortal rather than one with a monster boiling inside him. 

He was an utter wreck. Blisters pocked his skin and his nose and closed eyes oozed. Some type of liquid was being fed slowly into his arms through the needles that lanced him open. Loki stifled a shudder at the remembrance of Banner's dissection in much the same environment, years ago. It ended up not being a conscious decision: Loki found his hand moving of its own accord to the valve that connected the bag of transparent potion to the tubes that bisected Banner's arms. He shut off the constant drip of fluid.  
  
Loki reasoned now that Banner would either wake in time of his own volition, or he would stay asleep, healing himself through whatever magic sustained the perverse miracle of the Hulk. There was no harm in stopping the flow of potion, only a subtle mischief. The Midgardians would blame each other before turning the blame to Loki.  
  
But Banner must know he was here. He felt driven, compelled to leave a calling card.  
  
Seconds had been lost in his musings, so he acted swiftly now, aware of his own fragility and the Midgardian soldiers prowling the corridors for him. A vase of flowers had been deposited on the table beside Banner's bed along with a pair of glasses. Loki reached into himself, to his Jotun core and frosted the flowers over, wilting and killing them. He smiled slyly at himself. That was none too subtle. For his parting shot, he touched Banner's discarded lenses and fractured them. There was simple joy in destruction and he smiled at his own cleverness before casting one more look to the sleeping doctor. He opened a pocket portal to his favorite Norwegian mountain range and stepped out of the base and into the snow.  
  
Loki was blinded by sunlight and crisp, cold wind. The sun was magnified by the unbroken blanket of white that covered the mountain ridge. As soon as the portal shut behind him, Loki exhaled a deep sigh of relief at being free from those claustrophobic, hostile metal walls, and sank to his knees in exhaustion. Torpor shut his eyelids and he fell into a healing trance.

  
***

  
  
Slowly, Bruce regained consciousness. He was not aware of the process, but was suddenly mindful of the air filling his chest, of a mattress firm under his back. It was almost like waking from a deep sleep, except that his throat and lungs burned like molten fire and his tongue was scabbed and oozing blood inside his mouth. His eyes were sticky and the lids difficult to open. The only thing he could hear was the monotonous ringing of unearthly bells. His sharp brain quickly registered it as a classic sign that his eardrums had burst.   
  
Space exposure. Oh, _lord_ this would be fun... He'd read about it, but never hoped to experience it or its recovery firsthand. There was a tube hovering over his upper lip, feeding him a constant stream of oxygen. His tongue was scabbed from the freezing, or more accurately boiling, of his saliva. His skin was pink and beginning to blister. He looked like a sunburnt lobster and felt very much like one.  
  
But he wasn't in a decompression chamber, just a normal hospital room, so it must have been... more than a few seconds, but less than a minute or so exposed to the void. He never had a childhood desire to see space, but his ravenous curiosity then now made him acutely aware of his own recovery prognosis.  
  
His head throbbed to think of it. He replayed the last few seconds he could remember behind closed lids.   
  
Space. Floating, coming down from a transformation.  
Deep despair at his core, but unable to pinpoint why.  
Loki, mutilated and bloody, but not broken.  
His words: _'I am sorry. Simply that. I didn't know...'_  
And then the dark god's bitter entreaty: _'Hit me again, you fool.'_  
  
What did it mean? Bruce groaned wordlessly in pain and in frustration. There were memories at the edge of his remembering, but they stayed out of grasp, like a shadow.

  
  
A memory...

_'D-did I hurt anyone?'_  
 _'Just half of Harlem.'_  
  
_'You're nothing but a burden to me! You and your worthless mother.'_  
  
_'Your birthright was to die.'_  
  
_'Always so perceptive about everyone but yourself.'_  
  
_'Don't forget the safety checks, Bobby. I'll be back in eight minutes.'_

  
  
Oh god... he wanted to vomit but his damaged throat rebelled. Bobby. Oh god, oh god, _oh god!_ He couldn't hear the intense beeping of the heart monitor he was hooked to, but he could feel his pulse race and the ringing in his ears increased.  
  
Bruce forced his eyes shut and focused on pushing air in and out of his ravaged lungs. He had to calm down. He had to! He had to think of a thousand different things or he would be on the rampage again and then what? Destroying more lives? It was impossible! So, so impossible.  
  
He opened his eyes again and glanced about the room for a distraction. There was just the bed, and IV lines and needles connecting him to machines, and a vase of dead flowers on the bedside table.   
  
Dead flowers? They were frosted over and wilting. That was strange. It gave him pause and his inquisitive mind kicked in, relegating the grief and shame he felt over the boy's death to a nearby corner, safely and temporarily contained.  
  
He found his glasses on the table next to the vase and raised the frames to his face to inspect the dead flowers, but both lenses were broken. And... broken in the most interesting way. Were those letters? Maybe? He lifted the lenses a small distance away, focusing just on them. It appeared that the fractures in the glass were aligned in such a way that the left lens spelled 'you're' and the right spelled 'welcome'.  
  
You're welcome.  
  
You're welcome?  
  
...  
  
_Loki._

***


	13. Chapter 13

  
  
The questions came flooding into his head. Where was Loki? He had broken his glasses, surely. And killed the flowers? It did seem par for the course. But where was he then?  
  
Bruce's own memory stopped when the air was sucked violently out of the tenuous atmosphere that Loki had kept around their bodies, floating in space. Why were they in space? And why had Loki been so mangled and bloody? It had something to do with the Hulk, but he had no idea what.  
  
And there were other memories too. Memories in his mind that hadn't been there before. Of a golden palace, and a mother with warm eyes and awe-striking power. And of a young Thor. And heartbreak and shame. And betrayal. And pain. And death.  
  
They were not his memories. They couldn't possibly be.   
  
It wasn't difficult for the man with multiple doctorates to piece it together. Loki had seen Bruce's memories and given him his own in return.  
  
Was _that_ what his whispered apology had been for?   
And if so, why wasn't Loki here now, threatening him into silence with barbed words?  
And why had he fractured the words 'you're welcome' across his glasses?  
  
Oh god, his head hurt. None of it made sense. He pushed the call button for a nurse, who turned the morphine drip back on. Bruce slipped easily into dreamless slumber.  
  
  
***  
  
  
Loki's body was so cold that the frigid air, warm in comparison, had condensed around him like droplets of water on a chilled flask of mead. His lashless eyes opened to opaque light, diffused through at least a foot of snow. The frost had cocooned him and brought him back to life. He took a long, healing intake of breath and let it out in a rush, disturbing the accumulated snow and allowing him an unobscured view of the vista beyond. Mountains dropped away to seashore and the world glittered with a trillion snowflakes, each basking in the sharp arctic spring light. It was like a technicolor version of Jotunheim. Perhaps that's why he liked the mountain of Møysalen so.  
  
He shook the rest of the snow from his body and stood stiffly. It wasn't the cold, but the disuse of his limbs after such a period of inactivity. They were still Jotun blue and he ran his tongue over his sharpened teeth disdainfully. Enough of that.  
  
He was well healed from the tortures he'd inflicted on himself in the vastness of space and he had no more use for the disgusting skin of a blue monster. He called clothes to himself, well-tailored, dark, Midgardian, and felt measures more at ease.  
  
He inspected his pale hands, his legs, his foot, even his ears, to see if he truly had healed. And he had. It was an experience he didn't wish to go through again and it had been all for that monstrous doctor. The one who'd brought him low in Stark's tower, the one who'd foiled all his plans. And _where_ was his reward at the end?  
  
He gritted his teeth in anger. Fury and Odin had played him for a fool. In the end, only Banner benefited and Loki had been saddled with injury and memory, of which he wanted neither.  
  
The injuries had healed but oh, those awful memories. What manner of creature was Banner? Beaten by his father, bearing the death of his mother, abandoned in love, self-destructive and apathetic in turns. And he felt the weight of each death as a visceral blow, whether by the Hulk or by his own feeble mortal hands.  
  
Loki had felt Banner's reactions. Lived through them as he had. It was a wonder the berserker hadn't been unshackled earlier.  
  
But Loki wasn't just a spectator either. The experiences Bruce had gone through were similar to his own. If he felt the frail beginnings of a kinship with the creature, it was only due to his own disgusting, monstrous side.  
  
At least that's what he told himself.  
  
But enough of the self-pity. He had his fill of that in Odin's dungeons. There was a whole realm before him, nearly sobbing with need for his mischief.

***


	14. Chapter 14

  
  
Answers came to Bruce in dropping handfuls. Not all at once as he desired, but neither were secrets withheld intentionally. A bandaged Tony was the first to greet him after he fully woke several days later, his own lungs healing and sunburn peeling in great patches of dead skin. It was good to see the engineer. Something reassuring. Someone reassuring. Shortly after was Natasha, but her welcome back was reserved, different, changed. Then another man, dressed like a real-life wizard who named himself Doctor Strange. It was he who told the bulk of the tale.  
  
Bruce had rampaged after the school accident. They didn't know exactly who the student was yet, but Bruce knew. They would identify him eventually. The retelling of this portion of the tale spiked Bruce's heart rate and the nurse carefully adjusted a dial on an IV bag until the world swum in placid yellows and time grew a little hazy. He didn't like the sensation at all, but it was far better than losing control.  
  
After the accident... Tony and the Avengers hadn't been able to stop the Hulk's rampage. SHIELD and NATO and other world powers were called in to address the situation. Bruce paled to hear the level of the global response to Hulk's destruction. And then Thor showed up with Loki, and somehow - no one was clear on the specifics - the erstwhile villain agreed to help contain the raging Hulk.  
  
Dr Strange picked up the story and introduced himself officially to Bruce. He wove a story that was beyond weird. From Strange and Loki working cooperatively to the guilt they all felt when they knew Loki was piercing and stealing Bruce's memories. They _let_ it happen. On purpose. Because they had no other choice? Because they were all at their wits' end with the Hulk? Because Loki offered an easy solution?  
  
Under the calming yellow haze, Bruce dealt with and filed all these facts away, devoid of true emotion. He felt abstract, like he should be angry, or he should feel betrayed, violated. But those were human constructs. In the artificial calm, he had no need for them. So he thanked the three Avengers and let his eyes fall closed into welcoming sleep.

  
  
***

  
For their own safety, Fury suggested later, Bruce should continue on the Thorazine treatment regimen. It was calming, Bruce agreed, and it kept the Hulk contained under a medicated haze. But it took all of his emotions away.   
  
It was like living in a cocoon, for good or ill. When he returned to Stark lab, Tony's jokes fell flat. His apologies and their friendly reconciliation as well. The scientific curiosity was still there, but he felt neither angry or happy or sad. He couldn't sleep well at night, but he reasoned the insomnia and turning into a living zombie was a small price to pay for the relative safety of the human race.  
  
It did give Bruce time to think. Objectively. About the myriad of memories wafting through his head. Some his own, some Loki's. He recalled growing up with Thor as a young boy, discovering all the wonders of Asgard, and discovering how well the stronger boy's taunts stung. Then learning about magic from his mother. The wonder of calling a single flame to hover harmlessly above his open palm. The pride on her face, the love.  
  
And growing into a man: confident in his abilities, ready to prove himself with the challenge of leadership and the responsibility of the throne. And then watching Odin stealthily subvert his attentions to Thor. Preparing to watch his brother's coronation and plotting bitterly against him.  
  
Finding out the truth. Having it slapped in his face. The tears that he barely held back, the betrayal, the depthless loss. The poison blue that crept over his skin. An alien entity hiding in their golden glorious midst. No _wonder_ he never fit in?! No _wonder_ Odin kept the throne from him!  
  
Bruce remembered his murderous rage but it was all smothered under a clinical blanket of objectivity.   
  
So many memories! Falling into the void. Being dissected for Thanos' entertainment. Stitching himself back together through sheer will. The Chitauri, Barton, Coulson, Stark. All the righteous anger he felt. And his utter disbelief at being brought to heel by nothing more than a mindless green beast.  
  
His rage. His plotting. His hatred. All centered around his new enemy, the Hulk. His incarceration in Asgard. The invasion of the dark elves. The death of his mother. _His mother!_ The only one who cared for him. Now he was truly alone.  
  
And Bruce felt that too, the depth of his sorrow, the unfairness of it all. His inability to truly be the master of his own fate. To stand alone against the buffeting winds... and then simply be knocked down.  
  
Long sleepless nights Bruce meditated on Loki's past and found through the clarity of absent emotion, that the two men were uncannily similar. He could empathize with Loki's trauma. It was odd and it should have been frightening, but he'd lost the capacity under the blanket of Thorazine.  
  
 _'I'm sorry.'_  
 _'You're welcome.'_  
  
Nearly blasphemous words coming from Loki's lips, but Bruce remembered them. What did he mean?   
  
No, far from being frightened by his own thoughts, he was only intrigued. Who _was_ Loki, truly? What were his motivations now? What did he desire, in his heart? He couldn't still want to reign over a foreign throne? Did he cast his eyes to Jotunheim? Or was he now content to let it all burn for the joy of simple destruction?  
  
Bruce wanted to hear it from his cruel lips. He wanted to read it in his piercing eyes. He wanted to feel it through his ruthless fingers. He wanted...

  
  
Well, there only _was_ so much he could want in his medicated haze. Sleep finally pulled him under.

***


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter I have written so far. I had to get it posted so all of the other plot bunnies can be born. Please have patience with me as I get the rest of it written! :) And thanks for reading!!! ^_^

  
Loki _did_ want to watch the world burn. But first, he wanted his payment.  
  
Director Fury was not difficult to locate. Perhaps for human intelligence, but not for an Asgardian-raised Jotun: senses honed over millennia, wit sharp as a finely crafted dagger. After his weeks-long healing trance, Loki was again at the height of his powers and still in possession of the signet. He felt foolhardy and confident. Oh, it was delicious and a sensation long missed. A wicked idea tickled him and he opened a portal directly into Fury's office.  
  
To his credit, the director barely batted an eye at the demi-god materializing in his presence. Loki suffocated his surprised admiration.  
  
"I was wondering when you'd drop in." Fury put down the tablet he was working from and crossed his arms over his chest. _Good_. The director was still a little defensive.  
"Oh, I had _so_ many things to attend to, Nicholas. I'm sorry to keep you waiting." Loki dropped the friendly facade and strode up to Fury's desk, angling his regal chin upwards. "I believe you have something for me."  
"Really? That's news to me." The two men postured at each other, the tension palpable in the air.  
"Such _feeble_ memories you mortals have." He flashed his true, sharpened teeth at Fury and watched his eye bulge ever so slightly in delight. "Pym's suit for my help subduing the Hulk. Your realm is not destroyed. The Hulk has been recaptured." He spread his hands wide and smiled in a mockery of magnanimity. "I assume you have my reward prepared." But he really didn't.  
"Oh, that?" Fury chuckled, light derision settled on his features. "You thought I was telling the truth? I can't just hand over a critical piece of technology to..." he glanced Loki up and down, "you have to admit: a convicted _war criminal_. Ha- yeah that was never going to happen. You know it as well as I do."  
  
Expecting a falsehood and being slapped in the face with it are two very different things. Loki's countenance grew cold, all affectation of pleasantries evaporated.  
"You lied to me."  
"Yes." Fury was nonplussed. "I'm sorry, a liar is schooling another liar on his lies?" His one good eye crinkled with mirth. "That. is. funny. You're a funny guy. I didn't know you were funny."  
"I needn't explain it to you. You are a mortal of _some_ comparable intelligence," he scoffed. "But you do realize crossing a god is generally not associated with success and longevity?"  
"Are you threatening me?"  
"That should be apparent. I _will_ have my prize one way or another, Nicholas." His green eyes grew colder, if possible. "And I can assure you, it will be one dearer to you than Pym's novelty." Loki let himself fade away in a grand flourish of frost and ice that dissolved into snow before wafting away on a conjured breeze. It was one of his better tricks, and he was quite satisfied to leave the director bristling under a rime of incertitude and dread.  
  
  
***

  
  
However, Loki had no great machinations ready to deploy. He was simply content for now to revel in his own freedom. From Odin, from Thor, and certainly from Thanos. Instead, he swindled mafioso at cards,  
  
 _'Did you think you had a queen in your hand, Vito? Look again.'  
_  
and bankrupted new corporate acquisitions,   
  
_'Yes, Richard, I think this is an_ excellent _campaign for the company.'  
_  
unearthed national scandals for a laugh,  
  
 _'Nude pictures of the president with the senator? Et voila.'  
_  
and spun grand lies that deployed legions.  
  
 _'I do remember precisely where the yellow cake uranium is.'_  
  
But he also mused on what had been. Loki was excellent at analysis but rotten at introspection. He mourned the failure of the battle for New York, and the loss of his mother, and being fooled by Nick Fury, and at uncovering all those horrible memories in Bruce Banner's head.   
  
It wasn't necessarily the magnitude of the pain Banner had borne. Loki had seen numerous atrocities and cruelties firsthand. No, rather it was the similarities between Banner's experiences and his own.  
  
He hated his so-called father.  
He'd lost his loving mother.  
All his aspirations had crumbled to dust.  
He'd been picked apart like a lifeless toy in a child's cruel hands.  
He was, due to his own actions and in spite of his few good qualities, utterly alone.  
And he absolutely _hated_ what he was deep inside.  
  
Loki could feel the itch begin within his own mind and though he tried to ignore it, it only grew more insistent. What was this... grotesque kinship with another monster? It was horrifying. It was humiliating. But it wasn't repulsive. It should have been, but instead it was a bauble to play with. He tossed it like a pewter cup in his mind in idle hours.   
  
What was Bruce Banner up to? Should he... find out? The desire to drop in on him was fed by his rationalization that it would be fun to play tricks on the combustible doctor. Break his glasses again. Turn his hair all gray. Poke him with a big stick and watch him struggle delightfully to remain in control.   
  
Loki was musing on exactly such an enjoyment when the signet on his finger grew warm unexpectedly. He quirked an eyebrow and brought his hand closer for inspection. The ring had been dormant for weeks. He hadn't activated or used it. What was causing this reaction now?  
  
It grew warmer still and Loki could feel its perverse joy radiating through his finger into his palm. Something was making it react, something with blood and pain.  
  
Banner.  
  
They were still connected after all, weren't they? Through their blood which Loki had forced to mingle while they were both in the void. He had cut himself and forced Banner to inhale those red drops. Something was happening now, and the ring was enjoying it very much.  
  
Perhaps now was an ideal time to pay Bruce a visit.

  
  
***

  
  
There he was, fully green and fully enraged. The beast sprang from building to building, crushing robotic warriors in a melee of destruction. It was delightful. It was _poetry_.  
  
Loki wasn't sure exactly where he'd transported to. It was a smaller city than Manhattan, but big enough on its own. The Avengers were engaged with some force of mechanized soldiers who flew and swarmed and clawed and appeared to have no general goal other than chaos and fear.   
  
Beautiful.  
  
Banner was transformed in all his grotesque glory, and Loki was satisfied to simply watch and observe.

  
  
***

  
  
Bruce opened his eyes slowly, coming back to himself. He was seated on the ground in a muddy field in what looked like a destroyed public park. His overstretched pants collected in folds around his waist.  
  
So, it had happened. He'd finally lost it. _Again_. Fuck.  
  
What did he remember? He struggled to piece it together. The yellow medicated haze had kept him calm, even while processing all of the traumatic events leading up to and following his uncontrollable rampage. Then what had happened?   
  
Oh, yes... Fury had taken the medicine away. 'Doctor Doom', he thought the menace had been named? Fury took the medicine away and pointed Banner in one direction and let him do what weapons did best. Murder. Destroy.  
  
At least these foes appeared to be non-sentient. But as for collateral damage? Bruce had no idea of the cost. He looked at his own hands with great sadness. What evil had these hands wrought over the years? What blame did they carry? It was too great to fathom. He looked up through unspectacled blurry eyes to survey the destruction and saw Loki.  
  
 _Huh?_  
  
The sorcerer appeared to be simply standing there, some twenty paces away, mud soiling the bottoms of his black dress shoes and suit pants. He wasn't moving a muscle, just staring steadfastly in Bruce's half naked and exhausted general direction. He couldn't see his facial expression through the blur of his feeble eyes. Bruce blinked, and Loki was gone.  
  
He spent a half minute trying to determine if the mage had been there at all, or if it had simply been his overworked mind, producing some sort of waking hallucination. Certainly, Loki had been on his mind lately, but enough to cause his brain to vomit up a delusion?  
  
He couldn't dwell on that question, because the appearance of Loki and the absence of the medication suddenly sent a flood of other chemicals through his bloodstream. Those eyes. The cold set of his chin. His tendency to lick his lips before speaking some important but utter lie. Bruce's skin felt like it was on fire. His heart sped 12% faster. He swore he could even feel his own pupils dilating.  
  
Oh lord, was this one of the emotions the medicine had been keeping suppressed? Did he _desire_ that awful fiend? They had so much in common and in Bruce's connection-starved mind, the potential was tantalizing, even as impossible as it was. Like a chocolate filled with arsenic, gifted to a starving man.  
  
And now Bruce was hallucinating him? In human clothes, no less, a black suit for some reason. The autumn breeze catching his long unkempt hair. Before he could process that thought, Tony blasted down in front of him and it was back to the duty at hand, or at least the damage control.

***


	16. Chapter 16

Tony and Bruce petitioned Fury. No, petitioned was the wrong word. Tony presented his forceful, unfaltering arguments and Fury had absolutely no choice but to agree. Bruce's dose was cut in half. The yellow haze had dimmed to a golden background glow. It was in this new equilibrium of lucidity and control that Bruce began to enjoy his work in Tony's lab again.  
  
God, that was good. It was so nice to have a little more mental clarity again, and to be reminded daily that he was valued for his brain, not only his brawn. Tony had entirely forgiven him for his rampage and for damaging the Hulk Buster suit. He'd forgiven him for the cuts and broken bones, now well on their way to healed.  
  
Tony was a good friend. And it was such an odd thing to have a friend after so long on the run, and so many betrayals by people who only wanted the formula for what was coursing through his veins. It was a foreign feeling, but he tried to open his vulnerable heart again.  
  
"Hand me that blue vice grip, would'ya, pal?" Tony entreated, one arm up to the elbow in damaged suit, the other groping for tools. Bruce got up to search the workshop for it, but DUM-E had already found it and offered it to the physicist.  
"Thanks, bud," he murmured to the robot and handed the vice over to Tony. "Have I told you how sorry I am for banging up your armor?"  
"Yes. Approximately fifty-eight times so far. Stop. Really." The billionaire paused to grimace and bear down on a thick aluminum part that just wouldn't fit. "You didn't hurt me in any permanent way and you did give me an excuse to upgrade this suit. So... win-win?" Bruce chuckled softly and shook his head.

"Whatever you say, Tony. I am still sorry, though."  
"I know, BB..." he trailed off, still not getting anywhere with the armor. "Alright, I've had it. I'm calling in the big guns. Where's my acetylene torch?" Bruce knew the answer to that question by now and jogged over to the far workbench where the torch and flint striker lay. He picked up the striker in one hand, playing with the flint idly. His hand was covered in flame in the next second, before he could realize what was happening.  
  
And just like that, the flame was gone. Bruce cried out in surprise and pain, dropping the striker and cradling his burnt hand. What the hell had happened?  
  
Tony and DUM-E were on the scene immediately. Tony grasped Bruce's hand gingerly while the robot began disassembling the first aid kit. In a haze of pain, he could hear JARVIS' disembodied voice say something about an explosion of metal shavings, but Bruce could only really focus on his throbbing hand.   
  
His two attentive nurses were carefully spraying the burn with antiseptic and analgesic and soon the sharpest of the pain was dulled. Bruce looked over Tony's shoulders as the man worked on wrapping his hand to see if he could spot where the fire had come from, but instead he saw Loki.  
  
Clear as day. He didn't have to wonder after his glasses this time. The man was standing at the far end of the workshop, hands clasped behind his back, staring at Bruce intently. It was as if he didn't know that Bruce had spotted him. He stared back at the two beings huddled around Bruce, tending to his injured hand. His face was painted with the most curious stare. The physicist couldn't place it, but he saw its intensity and quailed.  
  
"Oh Bruce, I am _so_ sorry," Tony brought his attention back. "So we're even now, right? One suit for one hand?" He chuckled to mask over his concern.  
"It was an accident Tony, don't worry." The words spilled autonomously out of Bruce's mouth and he looked back up to see the image of Loki fade out and disappear.  
  


***  
  


Bruce was a quick study. Actually, he was a genius. And there wasn't anything that a high-IQ loved more than finding patterns and putting puzzles together. Two incidents was a pattern, and Bruce had no trouble convincing himself now that Loki's blurry appearance after they'd subdued Doctor Doom was not an illusion.  
  
He appeared after his transformation. And again when he was burned. What did those instances have in common? Tony? Fear? Pain?  
  
Was Loki stalking him? Appearing only when the conditions were right, then inserting himself into the situation like some type of twisted voyeur?  
  
Two occurrences were a pattern, but three was a trend. And under the lightly medicated golden glow, he couldn't deny his drive to call Loki out, to see him again. Bruce stopped taking the pills altogether. Started lying to Tony and Fury. And started planning.  
  
  
***

  
  
 _Again?_ Loki felt the signet on his hand warm. Banner was irrationally adept at hurting himself.

***  
  


"Cash and cards now, don't be stupid." Internally, Bruce rejoiced. "I'm not sayin' it again." The man's voice was heavily accented and a knife flicked open and flashed menacingly in his face. Bruce's heart beat faster. Not for the fear, but for the joy of daring to say:  
"No."  
"Are you _stupid_? I will cut you open." The youth, baggy jacket, Yankees cap on his head, brought the sharp point into Bruce's face.

"I know," Bruce answered calmly. He was wearing one of Tony's gold watches and a gaudy designer jacket, and walking through dimly lit Bronx alleyways at 2 am. It was idiotic at best. But it was exactly what Bruce was hoping for. "I do feel like I need to warn you. This will hurt you a lot more than it hurts me." His assailant chuckled in disbelief and rather than slicing him open, threw a fist at Bruce's face and another at his stomach.  
  
The scientist doubled over at the combination of pain, force, and at having the breath knocked out of him. The mugger was quick and young and strong and filled with indignant anger. He kicked Bruce's crouching form until the scientist was curled up on the ground, simply withstanding the blows as best he could.  
  
Maybe this was a stupid idea, he thought. No, _of course_ it was a stupid idea. What was he thinking? And why would he want to summon Loki anyway?! Was he out of his mind? Bruce focused on bearing the attack and keeping his heart rate down to try and stifle the green beast inside. It wasn't easy, especially in the absence of his medication.   
  
He heard the blows continue, but failed to feel them. For the tenth time that night, he questioned his own sanity. But when the noise continued and the pain did not, Bruce risked a glance upwards and saw a man hoist the mugger against the far alleyway wall, holding him brutally by the neck with one arm. The attacker struggled and the interloper dropped him, allowing the youth to run into the night.  
  
The man turned and a man became a god.   
  
" _Loki_ ," Bruce whispered. Anything further died on his tongue. He stood shakily against the opposite side of the narrow alley. The two titans locked gazes, words failing for the span of a minute.  
"Your watch," Loki gestured, and the gold of Tony's timepiece appeared at the ends of his pale fingers.   
"Thanks," Bruce murmured, accepting the bauble. "I really didn't expect to get it back."  
"No, of course. You're baiting bandits in the dark of night. Such _strange_ occupations you have, Banner," Loki mocked.  
  
Bruce held his tongue. He didn't have to give away all his truths to the god of lies.  
" _'You're welcome'?_ ," he taunted, chin raised. "For what? For bringing me back from the Hulk when no one else could?" He softened his brown eyes then, lowering his shoulders and shrinking into himself. "Thank you. I-I don't know what would have happ-... i-it doesn't matter. But. But _thank you_. I fucked up, again. So. My thanks." Loki didn't attempt to interrupt.  
  
"And _'I'm sorry'_? For... for stealing my memories?" He paused, waiting for some response from Loki. He received only a narrowed gaze as acknowledgement. "I hope you got what you wanted. I don't have many happy ones." Bruce broke the blistering eye contact, looking at his feet and scuffing them together nervously. "But... but you should know... I-I have some of yours as well."  
  
Loki was on him in an instant then, nothing more than a fluid blur crossing the few feet that separated them, grabbing Bruce by the throat and pinning him against the wall.  
  
" _What?!_ " he rasped.  
"Y-y-your memories," Bruce choked. He could feel his heartbeat rising and he used the adrenaline and supernatural strength that was electrifying his veins to push Loki back before he could transform fully. " _Jesus_ ," he gasped, hands on his knees, bent over double.  
  
"Choose your next words carefully, mortal," Loki spat venom through clenched teeth. But Bruce had his answer prepared on the tip of his tongue.  
"Mutually assured destruction. It's a human concept, and pretty terrifying." Loki was a coiled snake, but bid him continue with a curt nod. Loki was vulnerable now, the most dangerous thing for the demi-god to be.   
  
"Two forces, equal in strength, both with the ability to wipe out the other and destroy themselves in the process. I think that's what we are, right?" Loki continued to glower silently and Bruce prattled on. "I have no reason to sell your secrets. I know you have mine. Why would I want to ensure my own destruction?"  
"I thought that's what you were after?" Loki spat viciously.   
"Ha. Yes, that's true," Bruce admitted, eyes downcast. "So, you saw that one? I-I... What can I say? I got low."  
  
"Which memories of mine do you possess? Be _precise_." Loki's raised hackles lowered slightly at Bruce's continued self-effacing posture.  
"I... I see your childhood. A small Thor and a golden palace. A man with an eyepatch, a loving mother," he looked up at Loki at this admission. The mage was now an open book to Bruce, at least. The pain on his face was well supressed but etched too deeply to disappear. "Learning magic from her. The joy of it. And then some... not so pleasant."  
" _Continue_ ," the word was forced through locked teeth.  
"Thor being favored for the throne. Falling through space. Some pain... _awful_ and deep," Bruce shook his head and closed his eyes to it. "It's horrible. But then... there's also shame. At being Jotun... But it's-" He stopped himself in mid-sentence, looking up at Loki again.   
  
The sorcerer was paler, if possible. Still like a statue, and vomiting a mixture of rage and shock and pain from his eyes into Bruce's.  
"I-I won't tell. I shouldn't have seen. I-I mean, those memories are yours and you have mine, so... that's a pretty good bargaining chip." He started to ramble in his nervous distress. Loki wasn't saying anything at all. Nothing good could come of this, and that was exactly the opposite of what Bruce intended. They were so similar, why couldn't he see? They could be allies, unlikely, but still... Oh god, he was absolutely awful at tact, wasn't he?!  
  
Rage and fear were the only things flowing through Loki's mind. That, and a marrow-deep desire for self preservation. 

  
***

  
He knew? _He knew!_ Black-hearted Norns! It was his most desperate, shameful secret and now the mortals' mightiest weapon knew what monster truly lay under his own deceitful skin. Instead of coolly strategizing, Loki reverted to pure self preservation. There were two ways to become less vulnerable: throwing up shields or making your opponent more so. Loki chose the latter.  
  
"I believe you," he whispered. "It's my most closely guarded secret. I'm a monster." He allowed all of his self-disgust and hopelessness to bleed onto his face. Bruce's eyebrows knit together in pity, as he hoped they would. "You cannot tell. Anyone. _Please_ ," he begged, drawing closer to Bruce in hopeful entreaty.  
"I-I won't. But, but you're not a monster, Loki, you're-" he sliced Bruce's words in half by delivering the coup-de-grace: a kiss, placed ever so lightly and reverently on the scientist's mouth.  
  
If Bruce was warm, Loki paid no attention. If his lips trembled, Loki did not feel it. If the signet on his own finger was buzzing, he ignored it. If his cold heart flooded with fire, it was only at the success of his own cunning.  
  
" _Thank you_ ," he poured every bit of false desperate gratitude into those two words before stepping backwards through his portal to Moysalen and disappearing from sight.  
  
Loki, vulnerable? Ha.   
Far from it.

  
  
***  
  


Bruce took half a minute to remember to breathe. He'd lost most of his own shame over the years, and so spared no second thought to raising his own fingers to his mouth, trying to capture that fleeting feeling.  
  
His pulse raced and he reluctantly forced it back down. Couldn't he just have _this?_ Meditating for a few moments on the first kiss, the first real _touch_ , he'd had in over a decade.  
  
God.  
  
 _Loki._  
  
He closed his eyes and rested his head against the dirty alleyway wall, losing the stability in his knees and crumpling to the ground.  
  
The strength of the sorcerer was overwhelming. His physical presence, the power behind his words, the compulsion he drove into everyone to either obey or oppose him. He stole the air from Bruce's lungs and left him lightheaded, entranced.   
  
The only thing on the doctor's mind now was making that magic happen again.  
  
  
***


	17. Chapter 17

  
Loki was _furious_. He'd been exposed, betrayed again. Now not by an enemy or even a phantom friend, but rather by an object. _An object!_ The signet had spun his parallel memories back to Banner. On purpose? Was it a sentient being? Did it contain the spirit of its creator? Or was it simply operating on a default mode since inception, providing a mirror to each end of the connection he had forged? Or perhaps the true lore and workings of the ring had simply been lost over time and converted into myth and then utterly lost. Who knew what its powers truly were?  
  
This line of reasoning was logical, but it didn't make the betrayal and subsequent exposure he felt any easier to swallow. Banner _knew_ him now. He'd thrown all Loki's deep secrets back in his face!  
  
But... had he? He was just a mortal, he didn't know of the blood feud between Asgard and Jotunheim. He couldn't fathom the ancient cultural hatred and the thousands upon thousands of years that had built the disgust and self-loathing Loki felt towards his innermost core.  
  
Idunn, this was frustrating! Loki's mind was being strictly logical when all he really wanted to do was rage and rally against the universe for such a cruel trick.  
  
However, perhaps the universe was not without humor. The way Banner had submitted to him unconsciously. He could have rebuffed him at the outset, or pushed that tenuous touch away. He could have done a million other things but instead he simply accepted the kiss. No, it was more than just acceptance. Loki wasn't sure how to categorize it. Banner was complex in more ways than one.  
  
Loki's actions were meant to disarm Banner, to shift the vulnerability he felt from himself onto the mortal. But had his game gone according to plan? It really didn't feel like it now, and the demi-god was once again left with an unsettling if novel feeling in his stomach.  
  
  
***  
  
  
Bruce was tactful enough to give the sorcerer a few days' solitude until he tried summoning him again. They had parted after a heated exchange. It made Bruce's blood froth with conflicting and nameless emotions, but he knew confronting Loki so soon would be a bitter mistake. But the pale man was a curiosity too tempting to ignore.  
  
Bruce's black eye from the mugging had time to fade to a lovely purple and yellow color. Tony and Natasha didn't fail to ask probing questions about it, but he deflected as best he could. It was true he was looking pretty sorry lately, and they had every reason to be concerned. 

First it was his recovery from space exposure, and now it was his burnt hand and bruised eye. Tony inquired about his Thorazine intake, and Bruce felt horrible but lied like a champ. Was he getting good at this? He didn't want to be adept at lying, but if Tony knew the truth, there would be far worse consequences for him.   
  
_'Nasty black eye. How'd that happen?'_  
 _'Oh, Loki fended off a guy that I goaded into beating me up. And then he kissed me. And it was fucking amazing.'_  
  
Yeah... he could imagine how that conversation would end. More medication? Loss of freedom? Even Tony's disappointment alone would be awful and gut-wrenching.  
  
So he made up lies and life continued mostly as normal. Bruce waited nearly a whole week before Friday came around and Tony and Pepper had left for a night on the town. The rest of the tower had wound down for the evening and Bruce had retired to his quarters. At long last, sitting on the edge of his bed, he picked up a stolen kitchen knife in his bandaged hand, contemplated its pristine silver edge, and lightly opened the surface of his opposite palm.  
  
It hurt, but not badly. The blood welled along the cut and dripped onto his bedspread. Ah, shit.   
  
"Doctor Banner, shall I fetch someone to assist with that cut?"   
"Ah, no-no, JARVIS, I'm okay. Can you please put my rooms on privacy mode for now? I don't want to be disturbed." He'd nearly forgotten about that.  
"Certainly, but if you are in grave danger, I will be forced to override your request and contact Mr Stark."  
"Yep, I got it. But, but I won't be in any danger. Even if it looks like I am, I won't be."  
The AI's voice grew quiet and Bruce could only hope his wishes were understood, for in that moment, Loki materialized out of empty air.   
  
" _Strange_ ," the word dripped out of Loki's mouth, a quizzical look in his eyes. "You haven't transformed into your green incubus. You aren't injured through accident." He stalked around the room, bedecked in his Asgardian leathers. As if he were holding a council of war. "You _deliberately_ cut yourself." He stopped a few paces from the bed where Bruce sat. "Why?" It was a pointed accusation.  
  
"I..." Bruce was hesitant to give up his knowledge of their strange connection, but was faltering to find another explanation. "I-it's just something I do." The tightness fell from Loki's face and he frowned.   
"You expect me to believe that? After all the pain you've suffered, after trying to _end your life_ , after sinking into a quagmire of apathy... now you decide to alleviate your suffering through self-harm?" He shook his head tersely, rejecting Bruce's lie. "I don't believe it."  
  
"Okay, you're right." Bruce fought, but found the futility in it. "Why try to lie to the Liesmith, right?" He held up his wounded hands in supplication. He pulled off his glasses, setting them on the coverlet and painting his face with his best solicitous half-smile. The one he used when he wanted to get his way from Tony, or when he was trying to appeal to Thor to think logically. He ran his bandaged fingers through his hair, and sucked his bottom lip through his teeth, drawing out the moment as long as he could. "I... I wanted to see you."  
  
The look on Loki's face was priceless. His brows knitted together in confusion, and like an avalanche denial, intrigue, hope, and anger flitted over his features.  
"That's a better lie, I'll grant you, but I don't have time to play games." He flicked one finger in the air and Bruce felt his chin raise of its own volition, gripped by Loki's magic. "The truth. _Now_." It was not a request.  
  
"It is. You appear whenever I'm in pain, right? I don't know why, but I know a pattern when I see it." The haughty impatience disappeared from Loki's eyes and was replaced by a sheen of vulnerability. "I'm _right_ , aren't I? Why?"  
  
"Why?" It was exactly the invitation Loki needed. "Because I like to see you suffer." He grinned wide and full of teeth, but Bruce wasn't buying it.  
"No. It's like you're following me. It's like we have some connection... it's like-," his eyes flickered to Loki's hand. "What's that ring?" And he knew he'd hit on the right question when Loki paled, again. Bruce was buoyed by his reaction. He could read him like a book. Why was that?  
  
"So, you would hurt yourself for me? That's intriguing." Loki diverted the conversation into safer waters and Bruce let him. For now. He could still see the anxiety in his green eyes and he wanted it gone. Lord, they were gorgeous green eyes. "Why?" Bruce didn't have a ready answer he was ready to part with and sat gaping, wordless. "Hmm? What _else_ would you do for me? Would you lie for me?" Bruce laughed nervously. He knew the answer to this and he wasn't afraid to share. Not with a fellow monster.  
"I already have."  
  
Loki's eyes squinted, trying to probe the depths of Bruce and his answers.  
"You have?"  
"Yes. To Fury. To Tony and Nat, even." Loki arched one slender eyebrow.  
"You would lie to Stark and the lovely Agent Romanov? You impress me, Banner." A smirk threatened to crack his features. "You are indeed a monster." At least he was amusing Loki. And he was still here. Bruce felt emboldened.

"So are you."  
"Ah," Loki's features now split into a grin. " _There's_ that fighting spirit. I wondered if you had succeeded in killing it along the way."  
  
"You haven't answered my question," Bruce ventured. "Why do you appear when I'm in pain?"  
"You haven't answered mine," Loki countered. "Why would you hurt yourself for me? Lie for me?" A wicked thought crossed his mind and widened his eyes dangerously. "Would you steal for me? What else would you do for me?"  
  
Bruce's smile grew into an impish grin. He hadn't felt like this in a long time. This banter. Flirting? Oh god, he was flirting with the god of lies, and he was flirting back.  
  
"Perhaps those questions will just have to remain unanswered," he smirked.  
"Perhaps." Loki's brows drew together, his face retaining amusement but shaded with serious inquiry. "You are a strange beast, Banner. Not only a monster. Something far more bizarre."  
"Thanks." He could feel Loki's attention slipping, so he sprang for his trump card. "Why kiss me?" The emotion fell from Loki's face and was replaced with a porcelain mask.

"Why not?"  
"That's not good enough." Bruce tried injecting some levity in the conversation by laughing it off. "You can't just answer my questions with more questions."  
"Says who?"  
" _Loki!_ "  
"I have no obligation to provide you any answers at all, truth or lies." Loki stepped closer and angled his regal chin higher, forcing the seated Bruce to look even higher to maintain eye contact.   
  
He propped the doctor's chin up again with a sliver of magic, holding it in place. Bruce could tell Loki was enjoying the dominance his position demanded, even while he was unaware of Bruce's own insight.   
"The whims of a god are not to be questioned by mere mortals." The practiced words rolled off his tongue.  
"It's been a _long_ time since I was a mere mortal," Bruce smirked.  
"No, _no..._ you are a _monster_ ," Loki agreed with a dangerous grin, rolling the word around in his mouth like candy. The admission slithered between the demi-god's lips as he wrapped one hand physically around Bruce's bared throat. He was close, so close. Bruce could see his pupils blown wide even without his glasses. "Just. like. me." And Loki's mouth decended on Bruce's, lips parted but chaste. The kiss grew, and goosebumps rained down Bruce's arms. 

_Oh god_ , it was so good. To be kissed. At all. But _especially like this._   
  
Loki began devouring him, even as his hand remained locked in place around Bruce's bare neck. Heat poured through the doctor's chest and his heart picked up pace. It wasn't dangerous. Not yet. No, not yet. He wilted into the kiss, giving up willingly under the onslaught. Loki's hand moved from his neck to his hair, sinking into his curls gently at first, then breaking the kiss by bending Bruce's neck back cruelly. Tears shot to the edges of his eyes.   
  
It wasn't dangerous? _Everything_ with Loki was dangerous!  
  
But Loki was in another place then, his eyes unfocused at a spot in the distance.  
"It likes both? Pain and pleasure." His gaze shot back to Bruce. "Well then. That _is_ interesting." And a smile that froze Bruce's heated blood grew wide on Loki's face. It was a smile of cruelty and unspoken dark desires.   
  
A shiver ran down Bruce's spine. Who exactly was the devil he was dealing with?  
  
  


***


	18. Chapter 18

  
Bruce's submission was simply too good to ignore. The doctor knew that he and Loki shared a connection through pain, but he didn't know the nature of it. How could he, after all?   
  
Then, when the enemy's neck was bared and vulnerable, and in Loki's iron grip... There was nothing to stop him. No barriers to trip over. No rationality needed. It was only what _he_ wanted and in that moment, Loki wanted to pry Banner apart, starting with his impudent mouth.   
  
The enemy who knew him. But did he? The surprised gasp on Bruce's lips, the way his mortal eyes fluttered shut. He gave himself away. A willing sacrifice.   
  
He didn't know Loki. And the dark mage was tempted to show the doctor precisely where his knowledge failed.  
  
But Loki's awareness was not peerless either. The signet had warmed happily during that first kiss in a squalid Midgardian alleyway. And now, it was practically glowing as their lips met. Both pain and pleasure activated it? That wasn't anywhere in the lore that Loki knew. Interesting.   
  
And if true... the ring was so much more useful than before. He stared down at Bruce, a psychotic smile on his own face. He knew it was plastered across his pale visage based on the mortal's reactions. Sheer terror.  
  
Oh _Norns_ , it was delicious.   
  
"Very interesting, indeed." He released Bruce's hair and stood back while the human recovered. "I will take my leave now. I regret I've overstayed and my schedule has run amok." He faked disinterest and turned to open a portal while Bruce simply sat there, stunned and baffled. "Oh. Don't disembowel yourself for my sake? I won't be running at your beck and call like some servant wench." And he stepped through and disappeared before Bruce's eyes.  
  
  
***  
  
  
Bruce sat, stunned and pondered the interaction for some time, willing his blood to slow. He ran it over and over in his head all the next day.  
  
 _'It likes both. Pain and pleasure.'_  
  
What had Loki meant? What was _it?_ Was it some hell fire demon he was in alliance with? Was it some sinister spell he'd woven? Was it the yellow gem on his finger? The ring was suspicious, at least. He didn't remember Loki as one for ornaments and jewelry. But then, he didn't know Loki very well at all. At his first opportunity, Bruce cornered Thor and asked him.  
  
"The ring? You've seen my brother then?"  
"Uh, no. No, no, no, no. I just remember it from when we were um, you know, in space." Bruce thought he could hear JARVIS frowning, but knew it was only in his imagination. The AI stayed silent through Bruce's lies.  
"Ah! You are a quick study, my friend." Yes he was. "The ring was his only demand from our father before he came to Midgard to assist Fury in returning you to your human form."  
"Really?" Bruce was curious now. Curiouser. "What is it, exactly?" Thor's eyes shone like they did before telling a great tale of past battle glory. Bruce internally fortified himself for a long story.  
  
"It is Helgrid's Signet. It was forged many thousands of years ago for an elf who had wronged the Norns. The fates took their vengeance on him, and now the ring is cursed." He crossed his mighty arms over his chest and huffed. "I haven't any idea why Loki would ask for it specifically. It is one of the treasures in Odin's horde, but there are so many other, more powerful artifacts. I don't know why he singled that one out." Bruce's brows knit together. That was odd. Maybe there was nothing to it.   
  
Or maybe the favorite son of Odin didn't know everything about the ring.  
  
  
***  
  
  
Loki had told Bruce explicitly not to summon him. He was dressed in a smartly tailored gray suit and tie, listening to over 190 people sitting in semicircles speaking different versions of the All Speak. Absolutely none of them knew what the others were saying. Loki however could understand each human perfectly. Their internal disarray was beyond amusing. 'United Nations', indeed...  
  
But not even this chaos and its high mischief potential could provide adequate distraction. Loki told Bruce not to carve himself up, but deep down, he was wishing he _would_. He wanted to see how far he could push the stoic man's buttons. How far he could abuse his undeniable desire and willingness to please.   
  
Oh, Banner had such potential. Such brutal force and a mind to match, and yet he was begging for Loki's affections. He could be crafted into a fine tool. But Loki had to do this right. And so, as much as he would prefer to destroy all of the UN translators' microphones and go directly to Bruce right now, he fought down the urge. It would be better, and far far sweeter to appear when the scientist had finally broken and was begging for the dark haired god.  
  
Loki's face blossomed into a wicked grin. He sabotaged all of the microphones anyway. Chaos descended and Loki could only laugh.

  
  
***

  
It was near torture to not think of Loki. And to not strategize ways to hurt himself to call the dark god out. Bruce felt a very real connection to the sorcerer through their similar experiences, but his physical presence too was something he craved. Whether it was their nimble banter, or the relative danger, or walking willing into a situation that Loki was very much in control of, letting go his own control, and seeing where the currents pulled him.  
  
Part of it was his sheer attraction to the dark god, and the idea that maybe he elicited the same feelings in a being vastly ancient by human standards. A creature that had been alive when western civilization was mired in the dark ages, through the wonder of the Renaissance, and the industrial revolution. He must look just like an ant to a creature like Loki. It was this forbidden and impossible aspect that drove him forward as well.   
  
It was an awful slog to get through each day without thinking to cut himself on a sharp edge of lab glass, or burn himself with a cup of steaming coffee, or crush his foot under some pendulous weight in Tony's workshop. What a strange thing, he mused. To desire to hurt yourself, just to bask in another's presence. He was tempted to chuckle madly at his own insight, but held back. Between the two bandaged hands and the eye which was now healed, and the medicine which he was still throwing daily down the sink, he didn't want to give Tony any additional reason to scrutinize his actions.  
  
Bruce was on edge, for sure. In a way he hadn't been in a very long time. Not since those early days where it was just gasps of lucidity between transformations. Or since he was on the run, watching his back at every turn. His skin itched with inactivity, and Tony could tell.  
  
"What's up, Green Bean? You seem really tightly wound this week."  
"I-I'm okay, Tony. I think I'm just anxious to get going on our next project," he lied. The two men were relaxing in Tony's kitchen-slash-lounge. Few living spaces in Stark Tower were designed for one purpose only. They were expansive areas: plush sofas transitioned to stools that surrounded a mammoth granite kitchen island. Bruce was sitting in a loveseat and Tony was stalking around the area, unable to sit still. It was a fairly low-key evening by Stark standards.

"No, I don't buy that." The engineer appraised him seriously. "I won't probe, but I do need to know... are you taking the Thorazine still?" Bruce tried to keep his reaction from showing.  
"Of course. E-every morning before breakfast." Tony's eyes narrowed and a half-smirk flitted across his face.   
"Okay. I trust you." It didn't seem that way, but he didn't say anything more on the topic.  
  
"Alright." Tony let his breath out in one great sigh. "I'm just going to throw this out there. I'm totally comfortable with my own sexuality and Pepper has told me I'm _really_ good at it..." He gesticulated wildly in characteristic Tony fashion. "Would you like a neck massage?" Bruce chuckled good-naturedly. "No, really- I'm _great_ at it and I can see you're wound tight as a drum. C'mon," he entreated.   
  
"Alright, Tony... Sure." Tony had a way about him. Magnetic. There was little Bruce could say no to when Tony genuinely asked.   
"Awesome, you will not regret it," the engineer declared, slapping his hands in excitement and moving behind where Bruce was seated to get to work.  
  
It was great. Tony's hands were crazy nimble and strong. Probably from a mixture of coding and welding, Bruce reasoned. He leaned back into the billionaire's warm hands and let his eyes shut lightly as Tony kneaded through the bunched knots in his neck.  
" _Jesus_ , that's good," he admitted. The few words, truthful, were far more acceptable to utter than letting a tiny moan escape his mouth. Which Bruce was liable to do if he wasn't careful. It felt amazing.  
  
The steady pressure continued until Tony's hands suddenly stilled and he cried out:  
"Holy hand grenades! What do you want, _asshole?_ You know, you know, this is trespassing!?" Bruce opened his eyes, startled, but he had a horrible realization of what could cause Tony's alarm well before the image in front of him condensed in his brain.  
  
"What do I want? _Payment._ That should be obvious." Loki's stare bored into Tony. He wasn't looking at Bruce at all. And if looks could kill... There was an incredible hatred in that glare.  
"Payment? For..." Tony had his hands behind the couch now, out of Loki's line of sight. Bruce didn't doubt he was waking his newest armor to fly to his aid at the slightest provocation from the angry Asgardian.  
"For ending the Hulk's rampage." He spoke slowly, as you would to a child. "I was promised Pym's suit, but," he spread his hands, empty, "nothing has been presented to me."  
"I didn't promise that, I guarantee you," Tony's tone was as placating as Bruce had ever heard it. "If you were offered payment, it was from _Fury_. You should take up your complaints with him."

"Fury makes _ridiculously similar_ excuses." He snapped. "What a wonder... no one on this planet who will make good on their oaths." Loki's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Don't worry, Stark. One way or another, I do intend to collect a _proper payment_." His emerald eyes were alight with the promise of violence and death.  
"And we have the means to stop you. Again. Let's not go there."  
"Oh, I don't think you do." Before Tony could react, Loki stepped through his omnipresent portal and disappeared.   
  
Bruce felt like a spectator. Loki hadn't looked at him once. Not even a glance out of the corner of his eye. The entire exchange, he'd been little more than a piece of furniture.  
  
"Well, _now_ my evening is ruined," Tony raved. "JARVIS, put the whole building on a yellow alert. Any more surprise Asgardians in our presence and I want the whole tower lit up like Christmas." He spared a sorry glance in Bruce's direction. "Sorry bud, rain check on the massage?" Bruce nodded quickly. That was the least of his worries.

  
***

  
Loki was beyond angry. He vented his rage on the suspension cables of the Kennedy bridge, severing them and absolutely destroying Manhattan eastbound rush-hour traffic.  
  
What else could he destroy? The humans had so much statuary to deface. He wanted to crumble all their buildings and monuments. He wanted them to be brought low, to humble their ridiculous pride. To make them bow and beg.  
  
But especially Tony Stark. And especially Bruce Banner.  
  
 _How dare he?_ Pretending to be damaged. Pretending to be empathetic. Pretending to care. He was just another facetious mortal with superficial woes and contrived damages. His mother, his father, his 'awful' memories? How could his desolation compare with Loki's in the least? He'd had only a dozen or so trying years compared to the hundreds Loki had to grapple with. The mortal would find easy solace for his bruises and cuts. Perhaps he already had? But Loki was another creature entirely. His wounds were visceral and real and carried the pain of centuries.  
  
And partly, Loki was angry at himself for entertaining such a silly whim at all. How _could_ Banner know him? It was preposterous. He was weak and worst of all, _human_.  
  
Loki decapitated any bit of reasoning that he had entertained a kinship with the grotesque green monster. Instead, he focused his attention on the Three Gorges Dam and how he could best render it into powdered sand.

***


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trick or treat? Just treats. Lots of new chapters. Enjoy. :)

  
A week passed, and there was no sign of Loki. Bruce was trying to exercise patience, but it was so difficult after the chaos of the previous weeks. He meditated and dwelt on the snippets of clues he had to the inner workings of Loki's brain. It was so difficult and his heart and brain felt like they were on a rollercoaster.   
  
There was the initial pitiful state he'd found the dark god in, bloodied and holding onto their shared existence with incredible tenacity. Then after they were rescued from space, being the subject of benign pranks and discovering Loki's deposited memories in his own brain. And discovering their strange shared connection. He always seemed to know when Bruce was in pain, and delighted in watching.   
  
He was messing with his mind and heart. What was the ultimate objective behind those kisses? Bruce was incredibly tempted to take them at face value, but he knew he did himself a disservice by believing anything from the dark god was honest or unblemished or strictly single faceted. No, it was far more likely that their encounters had been engineered for Loki's unfathomable purposes. To confuse and unsettle the scientist? To gain some type of emotional upper hand in an extremely long game? Or for the sole purpose of generating chaos? It could be any or all of these reasons, none of which were what Bruce desired in the depths of his heart.  
  
It wasn't fair. The two men were so alike and there wasn't anything Bruce desired now more than companionship. Humans were social animals after all, and so many years had passed for him in relative loneliness and isolation. He knew there was a frailty and animal drive that clouded his judgement and colored Loki in such favorable colors. But he also was aware that monsters were seldom given the benefit of the doubt. Who better than he to know?  
  
And now, there was the tempting thought that it wasn't only pain that connected the two of them. Perhaps there was an opposing element as well. From the sorcerer's absently muttered words to their most recent encounter. Tony and Bruce had been relaxing together and Loki sprang upon them unannounced. He did like the element of surprise, didn't he?   
  
And he'd addressed Tony with nothing but fury. He'd refused to acknowledge Bruce at all. Why was that? Was he angry with Bruce? He racked his brain to identify what he might have done to upset the demi god, but found answers completely lacking. Had Tony done something that Bruce was unaware of? Or did Loki's anger stem from the scene at hand? Bruce enjoying Tony's platonic attentions. Bruce had to admit, he really was tense and Tony's hands were skilled. Pepper was right again, as always.  
  
Maybe that was it. From an outside perspective, how did their interactions appear? Bruce and Tony. Tony and Bruce. Was... Loki jealous?  
  


***  
  


As Bruce pondered, the likelihood that Loki had misunderstood the tableau in Tony's lounge seemed to only increase. It was a logical conclusion, especially understanding how Loki hated to not be in control of a situation. How he loathed being lied to, or betrayed, or played for a fool. That was one legitimiate interpretation of the series of events that evening.  
And Bruce reasoned, he probably didn't like to be surprised. It all started making sense.  
  
But for his reasoning to be right, he had to be correct in several logical leaps. The only way to be sure was to either recreate the scenario or ask the demi god himself. He wasn't really keen on either option.  
  
Oh, hell. It had been long enough, Bruce reasoned. Time to call him out.

  
***

  
"Hey, JARVIS. You don't think... Have we had any other unexpected guests recently?" Tony propped his chin on one fist. "I didn't know Loki could just... 'pop' in and out of thin air like that. It's freaky."  
"Indeed, sir." The AI seemed a little reticent, but in the midst of his musing, Tony couldn't tell.  
"Call me paranoid, but can you check if we've had any Asgardian guests, other than Thor, other than... what day was that?"  
"Wednesday, sir?"  
"Yeah, other than Wednesday evening." Tony imagined the worst and a chill ran down his spine. "Has our favorite bag of crazy been wandering around my house uninvited?" There was a pause of two seconds from JARVIS before he replied.  
"Yes, one other instance."  
" _Uh-oh._ " Tony's jaw set. "Roll the tape, Jarv-buddy?"  
  
...  
  


  
***  
  


Bruce had been foolhardy in inviting Loki directly into his quarters in Stark Tower. He'd also been reckless in wandering through darkened alleys dressed to the nines. This time, he caught the bus to Ward Park, overlooking the construction crew repairing RFK Bridge. There were no official news reports tying the bridge accident to Loki, but Bruce had a bad feeling. The timing of the destruction was simply too coincidental.  
  
So Bruce sat on a chilly park bench and watched the sun start to drop below the horizon. He unwound the bandages on his left hand. The metal burn was healing nicely. Time to ruin it. 

He dug a disposable lighter out of his pocket and held the flame under his palm. The pinprick of fire licked at his skin. Very quickly, the sensation turned painful and he was tempted to snatch his hand away. His fingers shook as he struggled to hold his palm in place. He thought he could smell burning skin, but maybe that was just his imagination. The pain was now blinding and he was forced to drop the lighter, cradling his tortured hand lightly.  
  
He glanced around, but Loki was nowhere to be seen. Fuck! He'd destroyed the sensitive flesh of his palm for nothing. His hand throbbed in pain and the beautiful sunset was long forgotten as he mused over what a stupid asshole he'd been.  
  
"Bravo. You have considerably more fortitude than I imagined."  
"Thanks? I hope you're happy. That _really fucking hurt_." Bruce didn't turn as a shadow walked out from behind him and sat a few inches away on the metal bench.  
"Your hand," he prompted, laying his own on his thigh palm up, beckoning Bruce to comply.  
Tentatively, Bruce put his hand in Loki's. He was trusting him not to skewer the burn and increase his agony. Would he? Just to see the tears in Bruce's eyes?  
  
Instead, Loki took the kind route and brushed the fingertips of his other hand over Bruce's swollen and weeping red palm. Bruce couldn't feel what Loki was doing at first, and then he realized that the pain had decreased by an increment. And then another. And another. Until the red broken skin had smoothed pale. The old blisters were gone soon too, leaving nothing but unblemished flesh from fingertip to wrist.  
  
Bruce wanted to thank him. The words were on his lips, but Loki's fingers kept moving over his palm. They weren't healing now, they were just touching. Bruce held his breath, not wanting to break the spell the other man seemed to be under. The ends of his long fingers were barely touching Bruce's skin, orbiting in strange patterns without reason or design. Goosebumps raced up the scientist's arms.  
  
It was... it was nice. No, it was _more_ than that. The feeling was electric on his newly healed nerve endings and Bruce's blood ran hot. It was pleasure, light and maddening and it made his chest burn and his heart speed and his groin tight and his breathing quick and shallow.  
  
He could hear Loki audibly swallow. Maybe the feeling was effecting them both. It was light and tenuous, and yet Bruce didn't want anything more than this feather touch in this stolen moment.  
  
"I am not a dog on a chain," Loki whispered, continuing his light touch. Bruce nodded, unable to tear his eyes away from the spot where their hands connected. "I will not come when you call." Disappointment speared Bruce through the core, but he knew... he knew Loki would never be tethered by this pattern, now they were both brutally aware of it.   
  
"I will come when I desire, but," Loki stopped the movement of his fingers. Bruce was compelled to look up, and the mixture of emotions on Loki's face could not be categorized. " _But._ If you cross me again, I will make you pay _dearly._ "  
  
"Cross you?"  
"Don't play naive."  
"I-I don't understand. Honestly," Bruce pleaded. Loki refused to answer, the glare on his face only becoming more and more mercurial. "What do you want, Loki? _Please,_ just tell me."  
"It's not what I want. It's what _you want_." His voice dropped an octave. "I _know_ what it is." He let Bruce stew for agonizing moments. "But more than that, I know _what you need_." His eyes narrowed, and the intimation was clear. He expected not to be crossed or interrupted. "You have run out of chances. You have precisely zero remaining. Clear?" Bruce nodded quickly, but he really didn't follow at all. "These hands are the only ones that will touch you. Understood?" Bruce nodded again. Loki's meaning was now apparent. "Am. I. Clear?" he prompted. Each word was spaced, deliberate, and Bruce could only breathe:  
"Yes."  
  
His phone rang then, breaking the moment. Bruce fished it out of his jacket pocket and looked at the screen. Tony.  
" _Shit._ " He did something he never had before. Bruce shut the phone off and let the call go to voicemail.  
"Do we have a _problem?_ "  
"No. No problem. It's nothing."  
"Good. Any questions?"  
"Just one." Bruce licked his lips nervously, in subconscious anticipation. "Can I kiss you?" Loki's eyes softened by the tiniest of measures and he nodded. Bruce brought his healed hand tentatively to Loki's chin, cupping it delicately. This chance was so frail like the last summer leaf in a breeze, but he had to try. He brought his lips closer to Loki's while the other man stared at him unblinking, daring him to give up, daring him to fail and crumble. But Bruce held his ground and pushed forward. Their mouths met and Bruce's eyes fluttered shut, reveling in the feeling. He couldn't stop himself from deepening the kiss, keeping a light touch on the other man's chin, but his lips conveying a growing passion, pulling and grasping at Loki's mouth. Trying to pull his lips apart, trying to impress upon him everything that was bottled up in his chest. Everything he didn't dare put into words. He had to convey it now or fail entirely.  
  
Eventually he ran out of air and had to pull away. It was an image Bruce would keep locked in his mind for ages to come: Loki's closed lids slowly opening as if waking from a dream. The demi god resumed his piercing stare but he couldn't help a molecular smirk from curling the edge of his mouth. 

Loki's form began to fade and dissolve, and Bruce found himself alone on the park bench once again. But he could no longer feel the autumn chill at all.

***


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you vote today? If not, get out there and vote! There's still time!
> 
> And if you're not old enough to vote... then what are you doing reading these next few chapters? :)
> 
> To everyone else... enjoy.

  
Tony was waiting on the couch when Bruce arrived back at Stark Tower. His arms were crossed over his chest and suddenly Bruce felt like a teenager caught sneaking back home. It was a bit disturbing and he immediately became defensive.  
  
"Hello there," Tony started. "Have a good time out?"  
"Um, yeah. I-I just went down to the park." Bruce continued to walk across the space, heading for the kitchen.  
"Oh, so... you didn't get my phone call?" Dammit.  
"You called?" he lied poorly. "Sorry, Tony I didn't get any calls. What's up?"  
"Hmmm." Tony uncrossed and re-crossed his arms, debating his response. Bruce felt about two inches tall. "So you were at the _park_ , by _yourself_ , no _calls_. I guess you also wouldn't know about the break-in we had a few weeks ago."  
"Break in?" The conversation took a different tact than Bruce expected and he paused, fridge door open.  
  
"Yeah. Seems there was a rogue Asgardian war criminal traipsing around the 63rd floor." Bruce could only shut his eyes in embarrassment and defeat. Shit. Had JARVIS given him up? No, it was more likely that Tony simply asked the right questions.  
"So... you know." It wasn't a question.  
" _Yup_. Although I kind of wish I didn't. What gives, Bruce?" He leaned forward, hands on his knees, entreating the doctor to make any of this make sense. "You know he's like public enemy number one. And you're _making out_ with him for some reason? Tell me I saw that wrong. _Please_."  
  
"Oh, Tony." Bruce heaved a great sigh, shutting the refrigerator door and turning back to the angry engineer. "I don't know how to make it make sense."  
" _Jesus Christ_. Are you two... together?"  
"I-I..." he struggled for words. "I think so?"  
"For how long?"  
"Since... just about an hour ago." Bruce smirked and blushed at the memory. Loki had let him kiss those sinful lips. Fuck. It was too good to be true...  
  
"Earth to Bruce? _Oh my god_ , you have this look on your face like a teenage girl." Tony stood up, striding across the room. "Tell me he has you under a spell or something. Tell me that you completely forgot he tried to enslave _the whole planet_ and destroyed Clint's mind." His brown eyes went wide. "Oh god. He doesn't have you under a spell, does he?"  
  
"No! No, no..." Bruce's gaze trailed off. "Well, maybe..." He still didn't know the mechanics of their connection, or their shared memories, or how the ring factored into all of this.  
" _Holy shit!!_ "  
"No...! No, Tony, it's not a spell. I just... I get him. And... he gets me."  
"He _gets_ you? I get you. Really! Why do you need to hang around with him and get all... _friendly_?" He spewed it from his mouth like some disgusting bug. "I love you like a brother, man. If you need someone to talk to, let that be me. Not... some megalomaniacal monster."  
  
"Who's a megalomaniacal monster?" Natasha walked into the room at just the wrong time. But she was blissfully unaware, a smile on her normally dour face.  
" _Nothing_. No one," Bruce lied again. "Tony, just _please_. Let me figure this out. I promise I won't let it get out of control."  
"It already is out of control. You just can't see it."  
"Please," he begged. Tony shook his head no but his body language said yes, agreeing to Bruce's request even though clearly every synapse in his brain told him not to.  
  
" _God dammit._ Alright. But you can't dodge my calls or my questions. And for the love of god, be cautious. Please."  
"I promise."  
  
  
***  
  
But there was little caution to be had when his blood was burning through his body. Bruce had gone through the effort of waking up early, storing his phone in a locker at the bus station, and catching the 139 bus south. Urban landscape eventually turned to suburbia, which turned to industrial areas, then rural fields, and finally wilderness.  
  
Bruce hopped off the bus and hitched in the back of a pickup truck for a few miles until he reached a wide expanse of state forest. Perfect. His breath steamed in the air slightly, but the frost was evaporating and the bright sun rising promised a warm fall day. He hiked deep into the forest, surrounded by miles and miles of nothing but trees and woodland creatures. No humans. No buildings. No settlement. Nothing the Hulk could destroy that Mother Nature would not be able to regrow.   
  
No collateral damage. It was important because the probability of him losing control was high. Bruce set his backpack down on a grassy slope overlooking a clear unbroken pond. He sat and contemplated that the insects were gone now, the weather too cold for their ilk. The geese had woken hours ago and were flying overhead. There wasn't a soul in miles.  
  
He took a calming breath, and closed his eyes, and allowed himself to do something he hadn't done in years. Bruce set his palm over his groin and just felt the warmth of his own hand through his jeans. He breathed deeply, working to keep his heartbeat steady. Slowly, he added pressure, pressing down on his cock through the stiff cloth. It responded in kind, like a beast awakening after a long slumber. It felt good, familiar, and he was transported in his mind back to his twenties. Before everything had gone wrong. It was such a forgotten feeling that it was easy to imagine the hand was not his own.  
  
But he wouldn't allow himself to think of Loki yet. No, that was too much. For now, he was just enjoying the ancient sensations of touching himself. He moved his hand over his bulging jeans and sucked his lip between his teeth, breathing through his nose. He didn't want to rush this. He had all the time in the world, after all. He leaned against his backpack and shut his eyes, working his hand a little faster. His heart sped and he forced himself to slow, taking deep breaths, and re-centering himself before continuing.   
  
The muscles in his legs bunched in anticipation and he took the tab of the zipper between his fingers and pulled down, unbuttoning his jeans. Now there was risk on the line, certainly. And his mind fled back to Loki. What would he think, finding him here, stroking his own cock? He wanted... he wanted...  
  
He couldn't think of that yet. It was too dangerous. So instead he took his erect flesh in one hand and squeezed. His head fell back and his mouth fell open. He had denied himself for so long. So, so long. Too afraid to lose control. Too afraid to cause destruction and death simply to satisfy his own selfish wants. But now? Now, he had planned and he was feeling foolhardy, and there was another element on the line. The possibility of Loki being here, reacting, touching him.   
  
His heart sped and he relaxed his hand, taking a few moments to remember to breathe in and out. Gradually his heart slowed, but his cock was still stiff, demanding. Bruce spat into his healed palm and wrapped his fingers around the shaft, stroking slowly. Slowly. It _had_ to be slowly. If this was going to work at all. His arm shook from the effort to keep a consistent pace. After so long, all he wanted was more, more, and faster. But he couldn't. He played with the head of his cock, pinching it lightly between his thumb and forefinger. It had been ages since he'd done that. God, he liked it. It was _fucking fire_ and he bit down on his bottom lip to keep from moaning out loud.  
  
"Let it out," a deep voice purred from behind him. Bruce immediately stopped and twisted around in his vulnerable position sitting on the grassy bank. Loki was a dozen paces away, leaning against a tree, his eyes lidded, arms crossed over his chest. Watching. "Don't stop on my account." Bruce couldn't breathe. It was exactly what he wanted, but now that he'd gotten it, he was too afraid to continue. He was frozen to the spot. Loki's eyes narrowed and he faded from view.  
  
Was this some new game? Bruce couldn't think straight, but his heart was slowing and his erection was fading. And he was alone again. Or at least he thought he was? He picked up his cock again before his erection could totally disappear and began stroking anew.   
  
Loki. Loki _was_ here. Somewhere. Watching him. He shut his eyes for a bit of privacy. He was too vulnerable with them open. He gave himself three quick strokes and then paused to let the blood return to a simmer in his veins. And again, three quick strokes and paused. And again. He couldn't stop the whimper that escaped through his clenched teeth now.  
  
Something blotted out the sun from behind his closed lids. There was warm breath ghosting over his face.  
" _What did I tell you?_ " the voice was terse and brooked no argument. Bruce shook his head, unable to speak or think or even to open his eyes. "My hands are the only ones that are allowed to touch you." Bruce whimpered louder now, speared through the core with hot fire at Loki's words. He dropped his cock and felt a hand cold like ice wrap around his shaft instead.

" _Fuck_." His heart raced. He tried breathing in through his nose and out of his mouth. It was no use. Loki stroked him surely and set a chaotic fast pattern he could not follow or keep up with. He whined, unable to sustain any control over himself. His hands fisted in the grass at his sides. "Loki please, _please. Mercy_..." he begged.  
  
The dark god stilled his ministrations. Bruce took long gasping breaths, trying to bring his heart back within normal range. When his breathing became something resembling normalcy, Loki spoke.  
"Open your eyes." Bruce did as bid and the sorcerer's face swum into view behind his glasses. His stare was piercing and only inches away and filled with nameless emotions. "Keep them open," he commanded and slowly resumed stroking Bruce's cock.  
  
Bruce's mouth fell open and every muscle in his body tightened. _Fuck_ , this was too amazing. He was too close now and Loki's stare was so intense, so intimate. What he was doing with his deft hands was more than Bruce could bear. He wanted to shut his eyes and give in, but he held them open with great effort, fluttering and overwhelmed. His heart didn't have to race, his body was already at the edge and he bit down on his own lip and came all over Loki's hands. It was fucking perfect. His whole body was aflame. It was better than he remembered. His toes curled and he couldn't help the moan that slid through his clenched jaw. The gasping breath he didn't realize he was holding exploded out of his mouth and he collapsed back on his elbows, boneless and sated.  
  
  
***  
  
  
He didn't want to use a word like perfect. It was fallible and inane. But his vast lexicon failed and all Loki could think was how perfect Bruce looked, splayed out on the grass, gasping like a dying man. It was violent and obscene and intimate and- _Idunn..._  
Perfect.  
  
He'd felt the signet warming earlier and begrudgingly pulled himself out of his muse of plotting to see what Bruce was up to. The answer was startling, but in retrospect, not unexpected. The man clearly craved him. And isn't this what animals did? Rutting and giving into their base desires? 

It was quite another thing to watch from the shadows of the trees like a voyeur and it made his own blood froth. He wanted to _own_ this man, this beast. He wanted to control him and take him apart piece by piece. The results were better than he'd hoped.  
  
"You impress me," he lied. Loki set his hands on either side of Bruce's torso, close to touching and yet not. "All this planning and strategy for a quick rut? How _desperate_ you must truly be." Bruce's smile was lazy and devilish and it looked like he wanted to say something else but instead all he said was:  
"It's been a long time. So yeah, I guess I am desperate." Loki's smile grew until it was just on the edge of sharp.  
"That's exactly where I want you to be." He started to fade out but Bruce called after him.  
" _Wait_ , I-I... don't go yet." Loki condensed back into the space above Bruce with a frown. "I... I have a lot of questions for you." He quickly amended: "I-I have answers for you too, if you want them."  
  
Loki was not keen on giving up any more knowledge to the man, but the promise of information was tempting. So he magicked away the proof of their liasion and let Bruce tuck himself back together and sit up. The two men sat side by side, not touching, but staring out together at the pond.  
  
"What... what do you want to know?" Bruce felt compelled to break the silence. Loki pretended to ponder the question, when really he was thinking about priority. Which question to ask first.   
  
_'Ab amicitia, veritas.'_ Indeed, there was an unlikely confidence that was spun in the aftermath of intimate engagements. And Loki was experienced at pressing his advantage when it was presented.  
  
"Why has it been so long?" The easy questions first. Build up to it. He watched Bruce fidget, but ultimately the words came flowing out of his mouth like water.  
"I... I'm always afraid that I'll transform. If my heart beats too fast... I can't control myself and the Other Guy decides that's his cue to come out and destroy." He ran ragged fingers through his curly hair. "Imagine, if the first thing to be destroyed was the person I was with? I-I can't. That's unforgivable."  
"But you weren't concerned today?"  
"No, no I really was. And truthfully I almost changed. Before you stopped..." he bit his lip in trepidation or bashfulness. Loki found it endearing despite himself. "I-I almost Hulked out. So... so thank you for- for pausing."  
  
That was _interesting_. Loki's mind raced ahead to extrapolate the scenario. A big green cock in his hand? Being smashed into the nearest tree? Or suffering the affections of an unstoppable monster? He successfully stifled the shudder that ran through his body.  
  
"So you've chosen celibacy for years because of this?" He directed the conversation back to safe territory.  
"Wouldn't you?" Bruce was defensive now, so Loki changed topics entirely.  
  
"When did it happen?" He didn't have to elaborate. Bruce's dejected sigh made it plain he understood.  
"A long time ago. But-but never long enough. Culver University. A stupid idea for personal glory. And I was too gullible and full of pride to realize I was being taken advantage of." He paused, looking at Loki, his face open and kind. It was an odd way for a mortal to address a demi-god. "That wasn't one of the memories you saw?" Loki simply shook his head no.   
  
Bruce fortified himself with a deep breath before continuing.  
"It's not a long story. I thought I knew it all. I thought I was invincible. I tested my own theory on myself and I paid the cost." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "It was stupid. I was so young and I-I didn't realize the danger I was in."  
  
"We've all been naive at one point or another." It didn't hurt him to admit this, so Loki let Bruce take the confession freely.  
"You're right. But some of us pay more dearly than others for our stupidity." Norns, how true that was.  
  
Loki had so many other questions to ask, but suddenly he didn't feel like it. He simply sat with Bruce in silence and watched the surface of the pond swallow their thoughts.  
  


***


	21. Chapter 21

  
  
The two men sat by the pond for a measureless amount of time, simply enjoying the silence and the unencumbered companionship. There were no burdens on them in this moment. Nothing to think about or to act on. There was just the sun, and the birds, and the endorphins that were still running through Bruce's blood.   
  
"I'd like to show you a memory." Bruce finally broke the silence. "Is that- is that possible?"  
"It might be. Is it pleasant or agonizing?"  
"It's a happy memory." Loki pondered for a moment, before leaning close to Bruce, their noses almost touching.  
"Then kiss me. And focus on the memory you want to share. That might make it easier. However, be aware that I could retrieve an entirely random memory, not the one you intend." Bruce nodded his head, accepting the risk, and closed the distance between them, kissing Loki softly before pulling on his bottom lip. 

The sensation of teeth on flesh wasn't painful. No, in fact it was the exact opposite and sent a thrill down Loki's spine. The signet responded and behind Loki's closed lids he saw a myriad of memories boiling like hot syrup, each clamoring for his attention. He poked at the one that appeared most prominent. It popped like a soap bubble and Loki was lost in the memory.

  
  
***

  
His body was very small and very young. He was sitting in a darkened classroom with two dozen other children. There was a man at the front, some tutor or teacher. 

"So from our reading, we know that light is both a particle," he switched on a sharp red light which shone against the far wall. "And it is also a wave. Watch closely."  
Bruce's young body sat up straighter, leaning against his desk to see. The other children were fidgeting and quietly noisy, but Bruce was keen to see what would happen to the small red dot.  
  
The teacher placed a simple thin wire in front of the red light, and suddenly the wall was lit with a hundred smaller dots, all in a wonderfully repeating pattern. It was breathtaking and nothing Bruce could have predicted. How could one thing be two things at the same time? But there was the proof in front of his eyes. Goosebumps crinkled up his arms. As the overhead lights came back on in the classroom, a hundred excited questions started collecting in his brain.   
  


***

  
"Magic," Loki opened his eyes. "I didn't know they taught it on Midgard." He received a befuddled look from Bruce. "The classroom and the split red lights?" he prompted.  
"Oh, that wasn't the memory I was going for," Bruce explained. "But it does explain the memory of yours that I saw." Loki's skin itched. Oh, not again. Was the ring cursed to always forfeit one of his own memories in return?  
  
"What did you see?" His brows knit anxiously, but Bruce's face was clear and open.   
"You and your mother. And a bird with a broken wing." The doctor's face split open with a grin. "You healed it together. What a _thing_ to do. What a _feeling?_ " He was incredulous and amazed simultaneously.  
  
That was one of Loki's favorite memories from childhood. Learning magic from Frigga. It had so many uses. And up until that point, he hadn't been aware of how to use his magic for good, only for tricks and illusions. He was loathe to give that particular memory away, to have it taken from him like that, but he was beginning to understand how the signet made the decisions it did. The principle of equivalent exchange was being strictly and brutally enforced.  
  
"Which memory did you want me to see, if not that one?" Bruce couldn't hide the smirk that grew from one corner of his mouth.  
"Should we try again?" Loki nodded, trapped in the scientist's unusual mischievous brown stare. Lips were lowered to his, but only brushed the corner of his own coldly drawn frown. The doctor kissed across Loki's cheek instead, combing his dark hair away with one hand and chasing it with his warm, plush mouth. Bruce's open lips pressed against his throat, kissing his pulse point, licking with the tip of his tongue. 

_Idunn_ , the doctor was good at this, even as out of practice as he claimed to be.   
  
Loki unconsciously tilted his head back, proffering access to his bare skin. His chest grew tight and electricity flooded through his arms down to the signet.  
  
The demi-god didn't have any choice of memory this time. Just one, _the_ one, which wrapped like thin gauze around his gaping mouth.  
  


***  
  


Bruce was grown now. It was chilly outside, and he'd wrapped a jacket around himself, sitting on a metal bench.   
" _Do we have a problem?_ " There was a man sitting across from him, thick accent, irritation bleeding from every pore.  
"No. No problem. It's nothing," Bruce was quick to respond. What could he do to placate this man? He needed to turn this situation around, and quickly. It was a compulsion thrumming through his veins.  
"Good. Any questions?" God, this man frightened him. But he made his blood race all the same.  
"Just one. Can I kiss you?" And Loki realized who the other man was now. It was _him_. This was _yesterday_. Bruce's hand was shaking imperceptibly as he cupped Loki's chin. It was unnerving to see oneself through this perspective. Why would Bruce want to show him this? It made no sense. He was there, after all!  
  
Bruce's eyes shut and Loki's view on the world of memory was lost. But he could feel what Bruce was feeling, and was kissing cold lips that eventually fell open for him like a vault unlocked. The passion in Bruce's veins was now at a boil. God, it was too good, too perfect. To have this chance, to be offered up such a fragile gift. He took a breath, breaking the kiss and opening his eyes.  
  
Loki saw himself again, the eyelids of his past self closed and stuttering slowly open. He was so _exposed_ , so _vulnerable!_ It was written all over his placid face! It made him absolutely furious.  
  
But... but... there was no malice in Bruce's heart at all. There was only an ecstatic joy, searing every molecule of his body with warmth and pleasure and success and the promise of more. Memory-Loki produced a minuscule smile and faded in front of Bruce's eyes.   
  
Bruce's vision turned from the empty bench to the view of the city below, and Loki could feel the pure and uncorrupted exultation that filled his body from his ears to his toes.  
  


***  
  


Loki opened his eyes. Bruce's hands were pressed to the sorcerer's chest, balancing himself as he returned from viewing another of Loki's memories.  
  
The sorcerer wanted to lash out, to lacerate and scar and throw putrid acid in Bruce's face. _How dare he?!_ It was presumptuous at a _minimum_ to show a memory that included the demi-god! But the rage was washed out of his body when he saw the pink blush settling on Bruce's cheeks.  
  
"Did- did you see it?" Loki nodded, keeping his face as flat as fresh paint. "I'm sorry," he preempted. "I just had to share. I-it's... that kiss is all I've been able to think about." He chuckled self-effacingly, breaking eye contact and running his fingers through his own hair nervously. Loki still wasn't sure how to handle his response, so he approached from another corner.  
"What did you see?" Loki asked.  
  
"Y-your perspective. Of, just now. You. Me. Here. On the bank of the pond." If it was possible, Bruce's blush increased several shades to red. He closed his eyes, grinning like a fool. It should have been repulsive how eager he was, but it was... attractive instead. Loki gritted his teeth in frustration at himself.   
  
"I don't know what to do about you, Banner." The silver tongue was finally silenced, unable to convey the boil of emotions in his chest.  
"Don't do anything." Emboldened now, Bruce moved his hands from Loki's chest to his shoulders and swung one leg over his lap, straddling him. Bruce had the upper hand at last, and he leaned down to kiss Loki, open mouthed. The signet throbbed on his finger, happy.   
  
Was that the signet? Or was it something else?  
  


***  
  


Bruce wasted no time in taking advantage of Loki's internal disarray. He knew exactly what he wanted, and he pounced on the demi-god in a rare moment of indecision. _His neck._ God, his lovely neck. Bruce was fairly certain that was Loki's weak point and he migrated from licking the inside of the demi-god's mouth to biting and mouthing at his pale skin. The muscles in his neck were tense, on display. Bruce couldn't help but kiss down each of them, smoothing over the bunched cords to the hollow between his collarbones. They were suddenly exposed.  
  
When had that happened? Bruce brushed aside the question and instead focused on more important things such as moving his hands from Loki's shoulders down his sides, grasping at the thin leather armor and warming his hands in the practice of memorizing each fold and detail and buckle. He heard Loki gasp then, clear as day. It was an electric jolt, urging him onwards. Better yet, it was _proof._

Bruce's body responded in kind, flooding his cock with blood and his blood with adrenaline. He moved back to Loki's mouth, kissing him senseless as his fingers struggled with the buckles and clasps.   
  
No matter what he did, they would not acquiesce. He groaned in frustration and the mage laughed.  
"It's not funny."  
" _Yes_ , it is." There was a pure smile on Loki's face and it shredded Bruce's heart to see it. There was nothing underneath it, no calculation, no plotting, no falsehoods, just amusement. Loki let Bruce struggle for another moment or so, and then suddenly all of the leather was supple and smooth under his fingers and moved exactly as beckoned. Piece by piece, the pale skin of his chest was exposed. The coverings evaporated as soon as Bruce removed them. Shortly only his jacket and the canvas pauldrons over his shoulders remained. The doctor cocked an eyebrow at Loki accusingly. Magic.  
  
"You wanted help, that was clear," he explained. Bruce knew not to dwell on his wounded pride and quickly picked up the chase again. With all of this unexplored skin before him, his heart sped and his whole body became warm. He drew his fingers lightly over Loki's flesh, causing it to goosepimple lusciously. Bruce brought his lips down as well, and kissed over every spot that his fingers explored. The planes of his abdomen, the dip of his ribs, the muscles that danced with his quickening pulse. 

It was such a privilege to have undeterred access to Loki - his vulnerable stomach, his exposed neck, his open mouth. Bruce gorged on the sight of his chest moving up and down in eager breaths. Then the spot where neck met chest. The junction where chest met stomach. The smooth area where stomach disappeared in a thin trail of of hair below his belt. The question was written clearly on Bruce's face and his fingers itched for more.  
  
"I won't stop you," Loki's eyes were heavily lidded. It was clear the Asgardian wanted this as much as Bruce did, and he wasn't about to spoil the game. Bruce's deft fingers worked his pants buckle open easily. Or rather, it was Loki's will that drove Bruce's fingers, that unbuckled and reduced the leather barrier to mist and molecules.   
  
Bruce's eager fingertips found Loki's hardness and teased up and down his shaft. He stared the demi-god down, finding his pupils blown and his gaze burning and begging. He had become an open book again, and _lord it was perfect_. Bruce wrapped his fingers around Loki's cock and stroked slowly, moisture appearing again from thin air to assist his ministrations. Bruce was really beginning to enjoy the advantages of magic.   
  
His own groin swelled and suffered under the constraints of his pants, but he forced those rapidly bubbling ideas to the back of his head and focused on Loki. He played with his fingers slowly, then quickly, then returned to an agonizingly deliberate pace and the dark god had trouble stifling the quiet groan that escaped his mouth.  
  
A bold idea shot through the doctor's head and he wondered how it would be to experience Loki's perspective on this encounter. It was possible, after all. He took off his glasses and set them safely aside in the grass. What would it feel like from Loki's perspective to see the devious smile that crept onto his own face? Would he be guessing at what it meant?   
  
What would it be like to watch, wide-eyed and disbelieving, when Bruce's mouth began to kiss at his chest, lick at his dark nipples, and continued to stroke, continued to thumb across his weeping head, timing the movement of his tongue with the movement of his fingers?  
  
If he crawled into the sorcerer's brain, would he find out exactly what Loki felt when he uttered the most delicious sound in the world? Bruce's tongue began a wet decent down his chest, down his stomach, to lap at the base of his shaft. Loki uttered a half-gasp, half-moan that shot straight to Bruce's groin.  
  
He kept going. Loki's cock jumped in Bruce's hand and his eyelids slid shut out of self-preservation when the doctor slowly took him into his mouth. _God_ , the way he tasted! Bruce had no time to be self-conscious or observant when Loki's fingers curled into his hair and held on. He was half-guiding, half-instructing Bruce's mouth and tongue. It was a feeling of sheer power that flooded the scientist's veins. A feeling of mutual possession, and it was tearing him apart from the inside out.   
  
He was dying a little inside at each quivering breath that Loki pulled through his mouth. Each gasp and groan his ears consumed greedily. And when the demi-god reached his peak, it was unexpected and violent and exactly _him._ Bruce half-gagged but pulled back, bringing him to completion with sure strokes of his nimble hands.  
  
The only sound now was the ragged breath passing through Loki's lungs. Bruce tried to be nonchalant even though his own heart was racing. He joined Loki side by side, laying on the bank of the pond, recovering.  
  
" _Norns_..." Loki tried. Words failed. Bruce responded by silently nuzzling his neck, trying to be as small and deferential and sweet as he possibly could. He imagined Loki would need to regain the upper hand, and soon. Too many memories told him that the sorcerer couldn't let down his veneer of control for long. It was too fragile a moment to stay frozen forever. So Bruce devoured the sight of Loki, disheveled, eyes unfocused, half undressed, hair in disarray.  
  
Bruce snatched at each precious moment like a drowning man. But it wasn't long at all before Loki swallowed, eyes sharpening, the spell broken. He cleaned and tidied and re-clothed himself in smooth and effortless succession. Sound returned all at once to the pond, birds calling and wind blowing through the trees. It was as if the figurative bubble they'd been inhabiting was in fact a literal one that cut off the outside world. Perhaps it had been.  
  
"I've kept you for far too long," Loki reasoned, standing and offering his hand to Bruce. The doctor grabbed his glasses and then grabbed Loki's hand, standing up. However, by the time he was on his feet, he felt like he was falling down. The world reformed around him and the pond and the silence and the solitude was gone. They were back at the bus station in Manhattan.  
  
Loki's eyes were unreadable.  
"Until next time, Banner." He vanished into thin air.

***


	22. Chapter 22

Bruce grabbed his cell phone from the station locker. At worst, it would look like he'd been in the city all day. At best, no one was checking his GPS location at all. Was that was too much to hope for? He was, however, relieved to see no missed calls or texts. Maybe he would get away with his stolen day after all. 

The mix of emotions in his chest was too chaotic to categorize. He walked all the way back to Stark Tower to have some time to think. Inevitably, it was dark by the time he arrived. Tony and Fury were waiting for him in the lounge.

"Bruce," Tony started. We need to talk." 

"I don't think we do," he quipped lightly. He wasn't about to let anything ruin his good mood even if the two men inside seemed poised to try.   
"Banner. Sit. down," Fury ground out. Bruce didn't walk out of the room, but neither did he sit. He had a feeling that he'd need every bit of bargaining ground he could get.  
"Fine. Let's talk. Anything in mind?"  
"Don't be abrasive," Tony chided. "We want to help."  
"Help? I don't want your help, Tony. At least, not _now_." It was a struggle to keep his voice as neutral as possible. Tony was his friend, after all. He'd opened his lab and his house to Bruce. But he'd clearly also betrayed him to Fury. 

"You don't really have an option." Fury spared nothing. "Have you been taking the Thorazine you were prescribed?"  
The question was so direct. Bruce couldn't help but feel a little defiant in response.  
"No, I haven't. Why? I'm not going to start taking it again, so don't ask." Fury rubbed one hand over his head in frustration.  
"Where were you today?"  
"Manhattan. Around. Shopping. _Stuff._ " The lies felt like venom on his tongue.  
"BB, we know that's not true. No one spends eight hours at the bus station. At least willingly." Tony had his hands outstretched now and was trying his best to be placating. "I don't know where you were, but I do know who you were with. Just say it. Please."  
"Nope." He was being petulant, and he knew it, and he didn't care!

"You don't have to say anything. We have footage." Fury's voice was triumphant and he pointed a remote at a blank wall, clicking it and bringing the white surface to life. A grainy security camera still image blazed across the wall. 

Bruce. Loki. The bus station.

"Well. What can I say? You SHIELD folks work pretty fast."  
"Mmm hmm," Fury agreed. "That sounds like something a traitor would say after he's been caught in his lies."  
"Traitor?" Tony's head snapped around. "We didn't talk about anything like that, Nick. Bruce wouldn't betray us."  
"Really? When the proof is right in front of you?" He pointed at the screen menacingly and then turned to stare down Bruce. "You won't take your prescription, you lie to us, you're in league with Loki, and you lie about that too." He shook his head with a mixture of regret and retribution. "You've finally forced my hand, Banner. You realize that?"  
"Wha-" but the words couldn't make it out of Bruce's mouth. He felt a pin prick at his neck, his vision swum, and his feet felt like jelly simultaneously. Clint... an arrow... Tony's concerned frown... and then Bruce was face down on the floor. 

And then there were no more thoughts at all.

***


	23. Helgrid - Part II

In due course Helgrid's ramblings and wanderings brought him to a bloody battlefield. The ring had been forged with mischief and amusement and fear, and these things it craved. It was a petty and complex ring: imbued with the dwarves' power, the power of the gem, Urd herself, and Helgrid's own gifts. It could even be ventured that the ring had a mind of its own.

The ring took in their fear and made men crumble. It took pain and divulged their deepest secrets. It took happiness and joy, and multiplied it. It saw blood and made the rivers run red.

In the midst of a battle, a great warrior appeared. Strong with flaxen hair and a gleaming brow. He towered above all the soldiers and foes. Before his sword, his enemies fell like sheaves of wheat.

Helgrid was amazed, enthralled. The warrior was so different to the quicksilver soliders of the elves. Helgrid watched the battle with the ring glowing on his finger in expectation. Soon only the tall warrior and his honor guard remained, victorious.

"Lo, young one," he called, pointing his blood blade at Helgrid. "This place of death is no place for children."  
"I am not a _child_ ," Helgrid shot back. "And I fear no blade of elf or giant or Hel-fiend." The ring made him confident and in that bold pride, the giant warrior found himself captivated.

He bid Helgrid join his band of warriors and the days passed with little care: the elf safe under the giant's watchful eye and the giant bewitched by the deceptive elvish spear always by his side. The two grew to an inseparability. By noon sun, they rested in tree-shade. By night, they fled the moon's gaze together.

Helgrid found a peace he'd not known before. He blessed the ground their feet trod and the sun that made their way bright. To bind the warrior to himself, he gifted his precious ring to the giant. But as he slipped the ring onto the warrior's massive fingers, the Norns descended and took vengeance for themselves and the wronged dwarves. They cut down the warrior at the knees and pulled the life from his body. 

For thirty days, his body hung from a great Aspen tree and for thirty days, Helgrid took no sustenance or water and cried over the ring that had brought such pain. He atoned at the feet of the great dead giant. And at last, his grief overcame his small body and the ring slipped from his cupped hands, dead. 

Where is the ring now? Some say Urd took back what was hers. Some say it still bounces between the branches of Yggdrasil. And some say that Baldur found its gleaming surface and ferried it to Asgard.

  
***


	24. Chapter 24

  
"Hey big guy. Time to wake up."  
Bruce struggled to open his eyes, crusted over from too much sleep. He was clad in unfamiliar grey sweats, on an unfamiliar bunk in a vaguely familiar metal room.   
"Where are we?" Natasha's concerned face loomed over him. It was nice to have her, a steady anchor to ground himself to, even if the situation was wholly unnatural. And if there was a big gap in his memory.

"We're on the USS Kembleton." She smoothed his hair over his forehead gently. The gesture should have been nice, but it seemed wrong, for some reason. "I'll explain as we go. But it's time to wake up." She offered him a hand and he slowly sat, then stood, and eventually followed the redhead shakily down a long metal hallway.

"Why am I here?"  
"What's the last thing you remember?" Answering questions with questions. That seemed familiar, and it made him a little angry. But only a little bit. A tiny, tiny, tiny little bit.

"Um, Tony's place. And Fury... and..." He shook his head to clear it, but had to stop against the wall as the world spun. "I don't know. Nothing else."  
"Yes, you went on a rampage again," she frowned. "Thank goodness Clint was there, and Fury was able to stop you before the situation spun out of control." She smiled warmly. "Don't worry. Nobody got hurt."  
"Thank goodness." His head felt better, so he continued to follow her down the hallway. The metal was cold on his feet. Why didn't he have any shoes? And what was that itchy scar on his arm from?

"We're here," she announced and the door swung open. They were on the deck of the aircraft carrier and Bruce squinted and tried to shield his eyes from the sun. This was all so confusing and he looked at Natasha with blank eyes for help.

"I know you have questions, Bruce. _Trust me_ , so do I. But right now, we need your help." She pointed to a gaping portal in the sky which hundreds of creatures were streaming through. "Hulk smash?" she pled.

A great sadness filled his heart, but he couldn't fathom why, exactly.   
Then suddenly, the haze in his mind was gone, and clarity returned like the volume cranked on a speaker. He remembered Clint shooting him with a dart and Tony's sad face and Fury's self-righteous indignation and Loki. 

Holy christ, _Loki._

He remembered it all. What was going on?! He felt used, he felt like a robot being switched on and off at its master's whim. He felt _really fucking angry_ , and the Other Guy took that as his cue and came out to play.

***

Loki clung invisible to the top radar mast of the great Midgardian ship. Conjured creatures from Hel had poured through an open portal above the ponderous metal craft. It wasn't his doing, certainly.

There was the Hulk, at the center of it all, trying desperately to leap from one crushed demonic body to another, but he was really failing at it. 

The spectacle was nothing short of ridiculous. Water was certainly not Hulk's friend. He would crash into the waves and then be flung back aloft by the combined might of Iron Man and War Machine, and then the downward spiral of destruction would begin again. 

_'There you are,'_ Loki thought to himself.

It had been several weeks since he'd last seen Bruce. Their stolen afternoon together was starting to blur into memory. Loki's first reactions after dropping Bruce at the transport station were selfish delight, followed by victorious elation, and then a rapid-fire bout of plotting. Bruce _was his_ , body and mind. Perhaps soul as well, but that remained to be seen. 

What could he do with such an ally? What could they accomplish together? His mind reeled from the more petty ideas involving vengeance on Asgard, to conquering Jotunheim, then to larceny of a series of rare magical artifacts. 

Or should he employ Bruce's intellect instead of his brawn? The opportunities for chaos were infinite. Or for exploration? What lay beyond the nine realms? What bounty could he rake into his fingertips? What plots could he overturn?

It was in this vein of musing that Loki suddenly realized several Midgardian days had passed. And no Bruce. That was odd.

Especially given the man's inclination to occupy as much of Loki's time as he possibly could. Why no contact? 

Loki waited. The signet did not buzz with either indications of pleasure or pain through their connection. It was simply silent. Was the ring bored, indignant, angry? It wasn't out of the realm of possibility. Loki decided an in-person visit was best and he stole into Stark Tower. Back to Bruce's quarters. But they were empty, unoccupied.

He darted from floor to floor, but there was no sign of the doctor at all. Stark was there, and the flame-haired agent, and various other humans and creatures. But no Bruce.

Loki tracked him to all the familiar places in his memories. He found the location of Culver University. The students on campus were only too eager to assist his buxom female form, but there was no valid information and no Bruce. 

He tracked down Elizabeth Ross. That made for an interesting and enlightening evening. But again, no sign of the scientist and no leads.

He would _not_ ask Stark. Absolutely not. That had about as much chance of success as his asking Heimdahl.

And so Loki simply waited. Like a maiden by a windowsill? Fie! He wouldn't be subjected to this by anyone, even Banner. 

Or... perhaps that was his game after all. He had gotten what he wanted from Loki and was now simply through. Oh, it was tempting to feed that line of thought and let the anger fester. But it didn't add up. Why would he be so deliberate as to erase his every sign of existence from the planet?

Therefore, seeing the Hulk now, Loki realized several things at once. The signet was likely not playing tricks on him. It had burned around his finger only minutes earlier and showed him exactly where the monster had come out to play. Also, the likelihood that Banner was strictly and successfully trying to avoid him was low. After all, no one could avoid any pleasure or any pain for weeks and weeks on end.

So it wasn't elation Loki felt in his chest, or even relief unbinding his shoulders. No, it was simply the joy of being correct.

Some plot was being unraveled against Loki. And he was determined to find out what.

***

Hulk didn't like being thrown around by red metal can man and gray metal can man. He also didn't like the flying creatures that buzzed around him. He wanted to fight them, but there was nothing to smash them into! And he was wet. Hulk _hated_ being wet!

But now the water turned cold. So cold. Hulk was standing on top of frozen water. He didn't understand why it was frozen, but it gave him somewhere to stand, and something to smash, and something to smash into the flying creatures, and somewhere to leap from.

Smash! Hulk was smiling now and he didn't need the metal can men. Smash, smash, _smash!_

***

Tony was skeptical of their good fortune, but didn't have the time or the wherewithal to investigate how ice spontaneously formed in the ocean off the coast of Florida at peak summer until every last demon-dragon was dead and dying. And by then, Hulk was bounding back from the ice to the ship where Fury was standing. He just knew things were going to get bad from there. Call it an inkling.

The billionaire felt sick to his stomach as he joined the small group on the aircraft carrier deck. He watched Fury pull _the remote_ from his pocket, press the switch, and Hulk's knees gave out under him. Tony knew exactly what was happening, but what could he do? What could any of them do?! It wasn't fair or just and it was probably several shades of cruel and unusual punishment. He frowned under his faceplate as the Hulk reverted back to Bruce, his body prone, small, and unconscious. 

Tony was also a genius. He didn't know how, but he knew shit would hit the fan right then. And so it did.

The ocean wind stopped blowing all at once. The sounds of the waves died too, but he could see the gulls still hanging on the breeze and the waves still cresting. It was like the four men on the deck were all in a bubble. The hair raised on the back of Tony's neck.

"Hello Director. Surprised to see me?" Loki was suddenly there in their midst, in full battle gear. He was standing casually between Tony and Fury and between Bruce's collapsed form and Rhodey. There wasn't a good shot either he or War Machine could take. At least without moving first and sparking the tinderbox that had descended around them.

"You are _not_ welcome on my ship. Leave now or we will put you under arrest."  
"Arrest? That's ludicrous. I've only come to claim my reward," at least Loki's voice was happy and buoyant. But Tony knew it was like caramel over razorblades.  
"This again?" Fury was spitting mad. Tony started inching to the left, to get Fury out of his line of fire, but Loki spun a glance in the billionaire's direction and he froze to the spot.  
"You misunderstand, Nicholas. I'm not _asking_ anymore, I'm simply _taking_." His face split into a wide grin and Tony's blood ran cold. "Remember? Your dearest prize, your _most valued weapon_." Keep him talking, Tony thought. He began to move again, and Loki didn't notice this time.

"Well, you're out of luck, your highness. We don't have any of that tech on board." Fury crossed his arms impatiently. Tony was almost far enough over to get a clean shot at the back of Loki's head without hitting Fury. He saw a wicked gleam in Loki's eye and suddenly everything made sense.  
"Uh, Nick? I don't think you and he are talking about the same thing."  
"Clever as always, Stark. Adieu." And Loki disappeared as quickly as he'd arrived, without a whisper.

And Bruce was gone too.

Oh, shit!

***

The grin on Loki's face refused to die. Even though he was not out of danger yet. The mortals around him descended into chaos. But it was just a simple invisibility glamour that was keeping he and Banner from their eyes. He had to act quickly. Loki walked on soft toes over to the doctor's unconscious body and picked him up. He narrowly avoided colliding with Stark's suit of armor in the fray and stepped through his portal to Møysalen.

The bubble around Tony and team popped a few moments later, bringing back the ocean wind and the sound of the sea and leaving them all feeling thoroughly duped.

***


	25. Chapter 25

Bruce woke with a shock. He was on his back, strapped down to a cold stone plinth. There was only the same dark stone for a ceiling above him, and only stone to the sides as far as his restrained position would allow him to see. The Hulk stirred inside and he struggled to keep him at bay.

_'Not yet, not yet. We don't know where we are.'_

He could feel the great green beast huff in a pout, but otherwise the Other Guy backed down. It wasn't long before Bruce's terrified thoughts were answered and Loki appeared around the edge of another stone which could have been a door or a hallway. Or neither.

"Loki... What's going on?" He didn't mean for his words to be filled with trepidation, but he had to remind himself it was the dark prince of Asgard he was dealing with. Regardless of their shared past. After all, he was _shackled_ to a giant stone table which he imagined was made for sacrifice or dissection, whichever was worse. His pants, still baggy post-transformation, were barely clinging to his hips. He was vulnerable, and exposed, and everything screamed danger.

Especially when Loki conjured a dagger and played with it in the air, contemplating its fine, sharp edge.

"W-where are we?" He gasped. No, he wasn't frightened. Not of his position, not of Loki's mercurial moods, not of the chasm in his memory, not of the blade he was fondling...  
"Those questions are moot. There's only one that matters right now." He fixed Bruce with a piercing stare. There was no mercy in it at all. "What has occurred over the past several weeks? _Be specific_."

"W-what?" That was the oddest question ever. "I don't know what you mean?"  
"No, really. Think. What do you remember? _What happened?_ " His eyes were so intense, but earnest. 

Somehow, it was that sheen of veracity that made Bruce answer, "I don't know. Really. I don't."  
"Are you saying you have no recent memories, or that you don't comprehend my question?"  
"I-I don't remember anything. Nat and I were on the deck of a carrier... and then I transformed. That's all!" The urgent pleading in his tone seemed to placate Loki slightly because even though he didn't put the dagger away, he did drop his hands to his sides, contemplative.

"What do you remember before that?"  
"Umm... waking up on the carrier? And before that? Well..." he furrowed his brow, trying desperately to make his brain give up its secrets. "I-I don't know."  
"Do you remember the pond?" 

The- the pond? It took Bruce a minute to piece it together, and Loki's intense stare fractured like glass in the interim until Bruce whispered, "yes. _Yes_ , I do."   
"What after that?" Bruce shook his head. There was nothing but blackness.  
"Nothing."

Loki began to pace, flicking the knife from hand to hand in thought. He turned back to Bruce, and his eyes were kinder now, but no less intense.  
"Do you trust me?"

Wow. That was a hell of a question. Maybe? In some situations? Under specific circumstances? Against a common enemy? On the placid banks of one specific pond on one specific stolen afternoon? But Loki's unblinking eyes brooked no conditional answers.   
"No," he answered sorrowfully. Loki's lower lids twitched nigh imperceptibly, so Bruce amended, "Would you? I-I mean, we have our Mutually Assured Destruction arrangement, right? And our shared secrets. And our _memories_ together. I-I don't trust you, Loki. But I do _know_ you."

That seemed like a satisfactory answer, because the sorcerer nodded once, closing his eyes and breaking their intense gaze. When he opened them, his face was softer still, and it helped to cushion the blow when he said:  
"This will hurt. Quite a lot."

He offered a rag to Bruce.  
"Bite down."  
"What?! Wait, _what?_ What are you going to do?" The Other Guy was knocking to be let loose.  
"Your arm," Loki explained calmly. "There's a barbaric and fresh scar across it. I don't trust what's inside."  
"In-in-inside? My _arm?_ " Loki gave him a cold stare, begging him to repeat his inane question.  
"I assume you'd like something to bite down on?" There was no pity in his tone now, only impatience.  
"Y-yes, please." Oh lord, this was going to be bad. Bruce opened his mouth and Loki gently stuffed a rag between his jaws.

Loki gave him no time to prepare, but perhaps that was for the best. The knife slid through his skin and parted his muscles and pain was everywhere. He couldn't help but cry out in agony. It felt like his arm was on fire. Jesus! The Hulk was suddenly there in the forefront of his mind, banging around and begging to be let out. Bruce clenched his jaw so hard he thought his teeth would burst. He couldn't transform, not now, not here! Not when Loki was trying to help in his own perverse and inscrutable way.

Oh, but the _pain_. He was no longer different parts of a whole person, he was condensed down to just the agony of the blade and his and the Hulk's mind screaming and screaming for what felt like hours but in reality was much shorter. At the end of a relative eternity, Loki eased a soothing cool palm over his forehead and declared it was done.

***

There was blood dripping everywhere, but nothing compared to the amount Loki had personally shed in this room in ages past. The knife was sharp and swift and while the dark god didn't know exactly what he was looking for, he did know the best and fastest way to find it. 

It was better for everyone to be quick. He really didn't wish to leave Banner in agony, and his screams were no longer pleasant to his ears. No, quite the opposite. Besides this, for every millimeter he dug further into Banner's flesh, the signet burned hotter and hotter until it was nearly cackling in glee around his own finger. That perverse demonic ring...

But he had found it. And pried it out. The object was some Midgardian beastery, that was clear. But what _was_ it? He didn't doubt Fury had his fingers all over this. And he would make him pay bitterly.

Loki cast his eyes sadly over Bruce's semi-conscious form. The mortal was quickly drifting into sleep from his tribulations and blood loss. Blood. Loki had made Bruce take his into his body while they were in the void. How would the connection change if Loki had Bruce's blood as well? There was still a modicum in liquid form on the edge of the dagger, so the sorcerer picked it up and sliced his own palm open. The skin of his hand sizzled strangely as their combined blood mixed in his veins. He couldn't feel anything different at first, but then again, the doctor was out cold.

He set to work healing Bruce's severed muscles and ligaments.

  
***

When Bruce woke, it was in an honest-to-goodness bed. Even if the walls and ceiling were still made of dark stone. Small improvements. He was so cold, he shivered with his whole body. Under the thin satin sheets, he was entirely naked.

Was he was in Loki's 'house'? Maybe? The idea both thrilled and scared him. What lay beyond this room? More stone? And knives? And pain?

At the memory, he looked down at his own arm, but there was no wound, not even a scar. Had it been a dream? He picked up his courage, wound one of the sheets around his torso, and aimed to find out.

The floors were like ice against his feet. It was a blessing the dwelling was not very large at all. As he rounded the third corner he found Loki lounging in a chair, wrapped in a large embroidered robe, deeply engrossed in reading some thick tome. The fireplace at his feet was long-cold.

"Hi." It was such a stupid, 'mortal' thing to say. Lame, Bruce, lame. But Loki looked up and closed the book gracefully.  
"You're awake. How do you feel?" The expression on his face was unreadable, calm.  
"A little foggy, to be honest. I had a strange dream that you cut something out of my arm."  
"That was no dream. Would you like to see it?" He gestured to a small alcove hewn into the rock, one of many that held collections of things. At his affirming nod, Bruce picked up an oblong object a few centimeters wide. It was flat white and plastic, medical grade. And it bore a trademark name: Thorazine.

"Fury put this in me?"  
"I would assume so." Loki steepled his fingers under his chin. He was more calm now, if possible. "He was the one with the device's control in his hand when I arrived."  
"Motherf-..." Bruce stopped himself before the rage could begin. Logic. _Logic._ Logic was the enemy of rage. "So he could contain me. Or better, the Hulk. Stop me from transforming and he gets to have the Hulk at his beck and call." Okay, screw it, he was angry. 

"Precisely. I have to admit, it is a good plan, and well executed. But he _didn't count on me_." Loki's strange calm morphed into an unnerving smile that make a cold shiver run down Bruce's spine and his rage flee.  
"Yikes. Well, remind me not to piss you off. A-and _thanks._ I don't know how long I was under, which is... really disturbing." Bruce ran his fingers nervously through his own hair. "Um, but I do have a favor to ask. Clothes? You keep the heat really turned down in here."

And like a spell, Loki's demonic grin was broken. He gestured and the fireplace roared to life and and the satin sheet was gone, replaced by glasses, and a purple button down shirt and khaki slacks. It all seemed oddly familiar. And the lenses were even the right prescription...

"Thanks. So, this is your place, then?" He was about to say something about the interior decorator, but caught himself. He really didn't want to test Loki's good mood.  
"Yes. I constructed it on my fourth trip to Midgard. It was far better than lodging with mortals."

Bruce glanced around the small room appreciatively. It wasn't opulent, but it was well constructed and solid and it even felt like Loki.  
"I like it." At Loki's raised eyebrow, he added, " _honestly_. It feels secure. Like... like the whole world is on top of us, and no one can get in." It felt good, he had to admit. 

"It is. The whole world, I mean. Or rather, one entire mountain. This is built in the caverns under Møysalen."  
"Under a _mountain?_ How far down are we?" He tried to keep the fear out of his voice, but Bruce's security quickly turned to claustrophobia.  
"A few miles. I can get in and out at any time through... what would you call it?" he mused. "The front door." A soft smile fell on his lips. "It feels secure because it is. No one knows about this place. Well, other than we two."

The gravity of that statement hit Bruce like a freight train. Loki had taken him into his place of solitude. His sanctuary. Actually, he'd spirited him away from SHIELD and from mindless weaponization and saved him. 

Loki.

Saved him.

He was compelled to kiss him. Bruce shut his brain off and simply cut across the room in two steps, kneeling in front of Loki, cupping his face. He kissed his pliant lips, long and deep.

" _Thank you._ "

Loki saved him. Technically twice. First from his own loss of control, and now from abject enslavement.

"You're welcome." Loki's eyes were lit with color, as if he wanted to say more, but held himself back.  
"How... can I thank you _properly?_ " he begged. A smile filled to the brim with mischief and dark, decadent things grew on Loki's face as slow as the sunrise. But instead he shook his head lightly and only said:  
"You don't."

"No, no, really," Bruce chuckled half-heartedly. "You've done all this for me. I could have spent the rest of my life..." he shook his head, clearing it. It didn't do to dwell on 'what-ifs', especially when they were as grotesque and horrible as what was floating around in his head. "What can I do for you?" 

With those words, Loki was again an open book to Bruce and the answer sped unspoken across his face, flushing it with emotion that was otherwise barely perceptible under his porcelain mask. Bruce's heart clenched to see it. There was so much there, so many _possibilities_ , if only Loki would listen to himself. To Bruce. 

And Bruce let himself acknowledge the love that was boiling in his own chest. The love that he was so eager to give to the demi-god. Loki's pupils dilated, nearly obliterating the green in his eyes. There was a gleam in his gaze, tinted with the lust for power and shaded with pure carnality. The two desires mixed together on his face until it was impossible to tell the difference.  
"You can let me lead." 

***

Bruce had one moment to inhale: a silent acquiescence before Loki's lips were upon his and his long fingers were threading through his curls. He was a god, and he was being presented with an offering. Literally kneeling before him. And by _Bor_ , he was going to take it. Loki felt like he had in the ancient past, before his personal war with Thor, before the horrible truth fell from Odin's lying lips. He felt like a god, and he was determined to extract his due pleasure from his lone worshipper.

The finest worshipper. The keenest weapon. The most dangerous mind. His ardent devotee. He kissed Bruce until his mortal lips were swollen and his cheeks turned pink from the lack of oxygen. This man. _He was his._ And Loki aimed to bind them together.

He ripped open Bruce's purple shirt and buttons flew before they dissolved. It was _that_ purple shirt, the one he'd seen the man-beast clothed in when they first met on the helicarrier. So long ago, it seemed. He pulled off his glasses, throwing them in some random direction. He pulled Bruce up from the ground by his lips and his chin and walked the mortal slowly backwards, loving the thrill that his disorientation pumped through Loki's own icy veins. He could have magicked them into his quarters with a thought, but it was oh, _so_ much better to watch the slighter man flail and gasp and nearly trip over his feet walking backwards. He was literally whimpering with building anticipation. Loki felt the ring dance on his finger. Was it from his own pleasure, or from Bruce's? The question was intoxicating.

Ring or no, it was apparent that Bruce wanted this. Even after all these weeks apart, the scientist was still bound to him. That fact was validation, delicious and pure, that the doctor's absence was not intentional. No, instead he'd been smothered under Midgardian potions unwillfully and kept from Loki purposefully. It made the sorcerer burn with the need for vengeance and he directed that desire into his hands as he pushed Bruce backwards onto his bed.

 _His bed._ Filled now with the solid weight of a man who wanted him so desperately, he was licking his own lips and panting from their brief separation. Loki pounced, trapping his prey beneath him and sucking at his exposed neck. He bit down on his jugular, not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough that Bruce's groin throbbed where it was crushed under his thigh. 

_Yes._ He wanted several things simultaneously. He wanted Bruce to scream. He wanted to make him absolutely lose control. He wanted to see him broken down and suffused with power. It was contradictory, but he wanted it all. He brought his hands to the Midgardian pants and tore them slowly with the bristling strength in his arms. There was nothing left to hide the doctor from his roving eyes and he drank him in through his fingertips. Lovely shapes and soft hair and quivering muscles and urgent flesh. The beast. The man. Naked and writhing and begging for him.

With a thought, Loki divested himself of his underclothes, leaving only the long embroidered robe encasing his body. He spared a thought for what it would be like to take Bruce in his Jotun form. The visceral disgust and humiliation was so wrong and so tempting, but one neuron of logic told him he would be subjecting Bruce's human skin to awful icy tortures. No, not now. They would have time to play with that later, but for now it was sufficient to take this man in his Asgardian form.

"Oh, _god..._ " Bruce gasped as he swallowed Loki's bare form with his eyes. Loki knew he was certainly pleasing to look at. But the abject adoration that was showered on him from the doctor's stare filled him with a feeling - like power, like conquest... like _worth_.

"Yes? Is there something you want?" he asked quizzically, a mischievous soft smile on his face.  
"You. Fuck, Loki. You. _I want you. Please._ " The begging was so, so delicious and he grew harder, if possible. He ducked his head to nip and lick at the insides of Bruce's thighs, making the doctor gasp and cry out. The ring buzzed and hummed, trying to process both men's pleasures simultaneously. Loki raised Bruce's legs and lavished the backs of his knees with the same treatment, biting lightly and licking to soothe it away.  
"Fuck! Oh god, _god_..." the mortal gasped. "Oh god Loki, that is..." the words died on his tongue and his eyes rolled back in his head. Loki was just getting started. Did the mortal have such little willpower? But then he remembered how neglected the doctor had been, and how little experience or stamina he must have. And Loki showed him mercy.

He didn't dally. And he didn't use magic. He laved his own fingers with saliva and gently pushed them into Bruce's tight hole.  
"Open your eyes," he commanded. Bruce was nearly weeping, he was so overcome. His skin was flushing green now. Loki worked his fingers in and out slowly, gently. "What do you want me to do? _Tell me._ Beg for it."  
"I..." Bruce started, his eyes closing again, overcome. Loki removed his fingers and slapped Bruce's ass viciously.  
" _I said:_ open your eyes. What do you want?"  
" _You._ Fuck." He was nearly beyond reason, beyond words. Norns, it was delightfully wicked, all this power boiled down and concentrated into this moment between their two bodies. Loki returned to his ministrations and worked Bruce open as the other man gasped and begged and pleaded wordlessly. He shut his eyes again and Loki pinched the head of his cock in retaliation.  
"Look _at_ me," his tone brooked no disobedience. "I am going to take you until you have no sense of self left. Until you are nothing but for me. _Bruce._ You are mine. Do you understand?"  
"Yes," his answer was quick and severe, and he was shaking from the pleasure of his own words. " _God_ , yes."  
Loki couldn't hold back anymore, and he relented, giving himself and Bruce exactly what they both wanted. He sheathed himself in the quivering mass of flesh beneath him and finally allowed his own eyes to shut.

Bliss.

Loki was a being of ice and frost, but Bruce was warm, so warm. It was _wrong_ and for that reason, so perversely _right_. He gripped Bruce's raised thighs and began to thrust slowly. He sped up and finally opened his own eyes again to stare down at the most wonderful sacrifice he could possibly imagine. But the mortal's eyes were now shut.

"Open them!" he roared, not decreasing his thrusts one iota. No, his anger only sped his hips until Bruce's hands gripped and twisted in the sheets, and his veins stuck out grotesquely from his flesh, green and on the verge of losing control.  
" _Mine_." He forced the word into Bruce's eyes like a liturgy. He saw the doctor silently mouth the word back to him and it was suddenly too much to bear and the power and the desire and the victory and the blind, insane devotion speared him through the chest like a diamond blade and he spilled inside Bruce, groaning through sharply clenched teeth.

***

There were no words for the effect Loki had on him. For the tsunami of sensory input that was the demi-god. The pale sorcerer was collapsed on top of him now and Bruce was slowly winning the war against the Other Guy to stay in his own skin. Every second, he backed down a little further and a little further until he was just a dim buzz in the back of Bruce's head.

_Thank god._

He wasn't afraid for Loki. He knew the mage could withstand pretty much anything the Hulk could dish out. No, it was his purely selfish and overwhelming desire to see Loki fall apart with his own eyes.

And he had. _Lord_ , he had. 

It was so transcendently good, it filled him with warmth and nameless emotions that made him feel like he was going to explode from the inside out. And now he was here, crushed under the blissfully heavy weight of an alien prince, stroking his dark hair and listening to him breathe. 

What had he done to deserve this? A past life? Something really stupendously amazing?

He couldn't piece it together. But he knew, with a clarity that frightened him, that he was unconditionally in love with the dark god. 

Evil? No. Chaos incarnate? Surely. Lying and manipulative and selfish and cruel? Of course. But all those flaws were diminutive little ants compared to the core of him. And Bruce knew his core was _good_. Under all the bravado, and the pain, and the hate, he knew him. He knew Loki.

Monsters. Together.

Bruce fell asleep with a smile on his face.

***


	26. Chapter 26

Loki entertained himself by brushing his fingers along Bruce's exposed skin until the other man finally awoke. It was wholly unlike an Asgardian sunrise. On Asgard, the dawn occurred all at once with diffuse light arriving from diverse directions. No, instead he watched the slow metamorphosis that began in stages with Bruce's eyes twitching under his lids. Then the lids themselves began to flutter. The doctor took a great inhale of breath and finally his eyes opened and his pupils searched for solid ground. They made quick work of surveying his surroundings, feeding input to his great hungry brain.

He smiled when his eyes found Loki.

***

"What time is it?"  
"Time really isn't relevant, is it?" A small smile began to trickle over Bruce's face. It _really_ didn't. There were no deadlines to resolve, no schedule to keep. God, he didn't even know which time zone they were in or what day it was or if he was even still on the planet. But his human predilection for patterns still drove Bruce to say,  
"Good morning."

"Good morning," Loki answered. The self-satisfied smirk that ghosted over the mage's pale features slowly turned into a tiny smile. The smile widened, tenuously. Warmth flowed through his green eyes and from every point where their bare skin touched. The curl of Loki's lips grew and grew until he couldn't control it and it spread, splitting his face in two. A genuine smile, parting his lips and making him chuckle lightly. It was infectious and one of the most glorious things Bruce had ever seen in his life. He kissed Loki's smiling lips simply because he wanted to and he could. The image of the rarest smile in the world painted itself onto the backs of Bruce's eyelids and embedded in his brain.

When the kiss broke and he opened his eyes again, an echo of that perfect smile was still upon Loki's face.  
"Thank you."  
"For?" One elegant eyebrow arched.  
"For saving me, again," Bruce murmured. "I don't know why you saved me in the first place, but you keep coming to my rescue." He stroked one thumb along Loki's chin. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. You were gone," he offered as means of explanation. "No signs, nothing. And then _there_ you were, fighting your captors' battles? I couldn't leave you to their _'mercy'_." He scoffed, shaking his head lightly.  
"But it's not just now," Bruce corrected. "When you had me, in space, you could have so easily taken away the air and let me die. Why save me then? Before we even knew each other. Like this."

Loki nodded, acknowledging his question with serious eyes.  
"But I had seen too much by then. Your memories." He grew thoughtful, breaking eye contact to stare at Bruce's chest mere inches from his nose, trailing one finger over his skin in mindless patterns. "I didn't intend for it to happen. Not like that. And then..." His eyes grew distant, thoughtful. "Don't even monsters deserve mercy?"

Bruce kissed him, wishing to chase the haunted look from his eyes. Loki likely didn't even know it was there, but he was always so raw, so open when it was just he and Bruce. 

The doctor took the opportunity to sate his curiosity when their lips parted.  
"The ring? I know a little already, but what does it do, exactly?" Loki stopped his ministrations and look down at his own hand as if he'd forgotten the gem was there.   
"It takes pain and shows painful memories. Or pleasure and divulges pleasant ones. But you know that." He fiddled with the gleaming object, twisting it on his finger. Trying to decide what to say next. Bruce gave him time and moved one warm palm to Loki's back, smoothing over his shoulders slowly. Relishing the simple joy of touch.

"I bound us together. By blood. In the void." He shook his head lightly. "I didn't know all it could do. I didn't know it would show you my memories, but I should've guessed. I didn't know the connection would be so..." he licked his lips, searching for the right word, "durable." He caught Bruce's eyes, and the doctor's breath hitched to see how earnest the demi-god's gaze was. "I can feel your pain, I can feel your joy. That's how I always know where and when to find you." Bruce remembered a more vague summary, imparted on their stolen afternoon and he had surmised as much by his own hypotheses, but it was good to have his theories validated.

"Why exactly did you venture into the alley that night? Picking fights with criminals and thieves? You never did answer my question completely." His eyes crinkled, incredulous and lightly accusatory.  
"I had a hunch by then that you knew when I was in pain. And I..." Bruce broke eye contact, illogically ashamed even though their naked bodies were still wound together. "I wanted to see you. You make me..." He closed his eyes, sighing. Letting the sentence remain unfinished. "You're not what I was told to expect. You're not like anyone I've ever met. You scare me, and you intrigue me, and you... you've captivated me." Bruce kissed Loki again, deeply. Searing the meaning behind his words into the other man's skin. There was more he wanted to say, but now was not the time. There would be time enough later on.

"I bound us in reverse. Just now. My blood has flowed in your veins, but now yours also mingles in mine." Loki was undeterred by the mild panic that flitted over Bruce's face. "You can feel my pain, my pleasure, now as well." He broke their gaze, working the ring off his finger. "I'd like you to have it. See what I see, feel what I feel. At least for a while," he amended, intending the comment to come off nonchalant when the meaning was anything but.

Bruce's eyes softened and he picked up the lemon-colored signet from where Loki had placed it on his chest.  
" _Really?_ " Loki nodded in answer and threaded his fingers through Bruce's hair, kissing him deeply.   
"There's more that binds us than just the ring's magic, now. It's yours. Odin won't miss it," he smirked.

And instead of uttering his thanks, Bruce showed Loki his gratitude by kissing him until both men were out of breath. Fingers in each other's hair. Teeth on lips. Tongues twining. Their skin warmed everywhere they touched and pressure mounted under the sheets where their hips met.  
"Oh, Loki. There's so much I..." the words caught in his throat, so instead he simply slid the ring onto his own finger, feeling it warm happily around his digit.

But the words and thoughts were lost in both men's throats as a great cataract opened in the room and a whirlwind tore through, sending them flying from the bed and landing in a heap of limbs and tangled sheets and shock.

***

Loki was on his feet instantly and clad himself in full battle armor with a half-thought. What could possibly erupt inside his hidden chambers, dug so deeply beneath the Midgardian ice and stone? This was bad. Very bad. And he'd face it as prepared as he could possibly be.

Bruce was still on the floor behind him, catching his breath as the wind condensed before them. Loki assembled some random clothing around Bruce's prone form. The first thing that popped in his head. Which just happened to be the same purple shirt and khakis he'd destroyed hours earlier.

"Loki, son of Odin, son of Laufey!" the wind bellowed. "We have come to take back what is ours and wreak bloody vengeance upon you."  
"Try me," he commanded. "Who do I face? Have the courage to tell me your name!" By now, Bruce was stumbling to his feet, but Loki didn't move his icy gaze from the vortex which dissolved to reveal three figures.

"We are all that has been, and all that is, and all that shall ever be."  
" _Norns_ ," Loki ground out. "You vile witches and wondrous goddesses." He wasn't sure whether to be threatening or to abase himself before them. Unpredictable, fickle, all powerful, and long-suffering. There was usually no way to win and many ways to lose with the Fates. He stood his ground only through sheer force of will.

He didn't dare cast his eyes away from them and back to Bruce, but he could feel the other man shuffle to his feet.   
'Don't say anything,' he thought wordlessly. 'Don't transform, don't interfere.'  
These were beings beyond physical force, beyond magic, beyond anything Bruce had encountered before.

"You have taken from us our hair, our power. We will have it back, now! Your punishment will be death," the middle creature Verdandi cried, taking the form of a woman in the full glory of her days.  
"So it is your fate," screamed the demon who wore the mask of a young maiden, Skuld.  
"We have seen your treachery. There is nowhere to hide," laughed Urd the oldest, a decrepit crone, withered and filled with rage.

"I am Loki, son of Asgard, rightful heir of Jotunheim! Have your eyes lost their skill? I am not Helgrid, the pitiful elf with whom you quarrel." He made his voice as strong as possible, but he knew was playing with fire.  
"It matters not," said the first.  
"You have what is ours," accused the second.  
"Shall we take your life or your companion's instead?" baited the third. Loki's blood ran cold.

" _What?!_ " interrupted Bruce. "Are you out of your minds? We're not-" He began to move from behind Loki, but he stopped and silenced him with one commanding hand on the doctor's shoulder. Bruce really had no measure capacious enough to comprehend the danger that stood before them. Loki tried to communicate through his firm grip on Bruce, but let his words to the Norns speak for him instead.

"Oh great ladies, see reason, I beg you." Should he get on his knees? Or remain standing to show power? They were fickle, so fickle. Any move could be the wrong one. He shook his head. Maybe truth was the best route now. "Haven't you ever coveted something beautiful and powerful and _extraordinary_ for no reason at all?" He grasped Bruce's wrist, his pulse throbbing. The doctor was so warm, so full of life. He was his. Couldn't he just have this? Just this?!

Loki pulled him forward gently by the wrist, the doctor's hand outstretched, the ring upon it.   
"Take back the signet. It is yours after all." But his parlay fell on deaf ears.  
"Your life. Or. Your companion's. Choose," the youngest repeated.

Loki broke his stare from the three Norns to look at Bruce now. Wonderful Bruce. Precious Bruce. His human eyebrows knitted in confusion and he looked to Loki for answers.

"Loki..."

There were none. There was simply no answer, no play that would get them out of this together. No, even as powerful as the doctor was, he was only mortal. The Hulk couldn't save them. Loki knew it in his core. They were utterly doomed. Their happiness stolen and now their lives as well. They were at an end, and they had only just begun. 

Of all the cruelties of fate! 

He could only play for time now. Maybe there was a way he could be clever enough to-

"Son of Brian," they spoke in a vile chorus. "You carry deep scars within your Midgardian frame. It would be a small thing to end your life now. No more pain, no more running. No more mourning your dead offspring. Your line ends here."  
"What?" Bruce had the wherewithal to gasp. "My-my offspring? I-I think you've got me confused with someone else. No offense, ladies."

The three spun as one to Loki. _Oh Idunn, no!_ He would have spared him this.

"He does not know?" the eldest shrieked and then pointed back to Bruce. "Son of Brian, we have a tale to impart before your death." The wicked glee was painted bold across her face. It made Loki want to vomit.

"Great ladies!" he screamed. "I beg you, let... let _me_ tell the account." It was the least he could do. It was the only mercy he could give. "Have you ever heard the talented Silvertongue weave a tale firsthand? It is a delight which you should not deprive yourselves."

At least they were now intrigued. Vile beasts! Their conceit was a weakness, and Loki would exploit it as long as he had breath in his lungs.

"Begin," commanded the youngest, her fair eyes full of wicked desires.  
Loki turned to Bruce, summoning all his will to ignore the omnipotent creatures on the far side of the room.

"Bruce," his voice was like a whisper now and his eyes deadly serious. The man's bewildered eyes flitted from the Norns to Loki and back again, unsure which was the safer place to settle his gaze. "I didn't want to tell you. You have to know that first. I didn't want to cause you more pain. But these witches are correct, you have a right to know."

"Know... what?" his face was a portrait of anxiety and fear. He was so perfect. In this moment, all hesitation and glorious ignorance. A few months ago, Loki would have been only too happy to shatter it. But _now?_ Now, he would rather pluck out his own eyes than cause him pain. Inevitable, horrible pain.

There was no option to stop now. No mercy for monsters after all.

"I looked for you," he started gently. "Everywhere. After I brought you back to the transport station. Our afternoon by the pond?" he prompted. The frown grew on the doctor's face. "But you were gone. I went to Stark's tower. I scoured those desolate alleys. The park. The places I'd seen in your memories. Harlem, Calcutta, Culver University. And then... Then, I found her."  
'Who?' Bruce's eyes seemed to ask. Loki captured and filed his blissful incomprehension away in a memory. Trapping the last of their peace in his brain before it all came crumbling down.

"Elizabeth Ross." And there was the avalanche, falling over Bruce's visage. It started in his forehead, transforming smooth skin to wrinkled confusion. His eyebrows, knitting together. His eyes, narrowing in disbelief. His lips, opening and closing wordlessly, unable to function.

"It was your son. I'm sorry. I'm so, _so_ , sorry. Believe me, _please_. I saw your memory and I thought, 'perhaps', but I didn't truly know until I met her." He swallowed heavily, stalling for time. "She told me. She wanted to tell you, but..." There were precious few moments left. Soon, the world would be ripped in two. Oh, he loved chaos, he craved panic and entropy and disorder and fear. But not now! Idunn, not now. _Not Bruce!_

His whispered prayers fell on deaf ears.

"Robert Bruce Ross, Junior. Better known as _Bobby_." The horror dawned on the doctor's face then, and it was no Asgardian or Midgardian sunrise, it was a firestorm of devastation. The boy in the classroom. The one to whom he'd given extra minutes for the exam. The one Bruce had left with an open gas line, to teach him a safety lesson. The fire. The blackened corpse. The origin of this whole tragedy.

Bruce screamed and collapsed to his knees. He held his head in his hands and wailed.  
"No! _No, no, no!!!_ " He tore at his hair and sobbed. "It's, it's, it's not true! _It can't be true!_ How could it? Bobby? Oh god, why?!" He looked up at Loki for answers, his eyes red and swollen, mouth gaping like a fish.  
"Bruce. It's not your fault," he lied, trying to reach out to him. But Bruce inched away, curling in on himself. "You've paid your penance, it will be alright." 

Lies. In what universe would it ever be okay? He'd killed his own son, likely the only son he'd ever have. He had become a parent and had it torn away from him in the same horrifying moment. Loki sank to his knees and tried to lay one comforting hand on Bruce's shoulders, but he threw it off violently and Loki could already feel the strength bristling through his muscles, bunching under his shirt.

No. Please, please, _please_ , no. 

It was disgustingly ironic. They'd been brought together by Bruce's rampage and they were going to be torn apart by it as well. If Loki didn't survive this day, it would be his fair penance. If he did, he would obsess over this moment endlessly.

"You don't have to give in, Bruce. You don't have to let the Hulk out. You can process this, we will process it together. I will... I will do _anything_ I can. I will get you through this! _We_ will get through this _together_." All his words, his pleasant lies and desperate begging was for nothing. Bruce was deaf to him and his banalities. The doctor's skin was mottled green now, and there was no turning back.

"Please..."

But when do monsters ever get what they want?

Bruce was gone and in his stead was the great green dragon, bloodshot eyes bulging from their sockets. Foaming spittle hanging from his mouth. Veins throbbing in his forehead. It was the worst Loki had ever seen the beast. Out of control. Beyond contact and well beyond reason. He roared his agony but could not move, locked in place by the Norns' sheer power.

"It is done," murmured Verdandi, middle sister. "A mindless animal with no past and no future. He is only fit to be put out of his misery."  
"No!" Loki spun on his heels but stayed kneeling, abasing himself before the vile women. "I _beg_ you, please no." He called the ring to his hand with a wordless spell from where it had fallen off Bruce's finger during his transformation.

"Take the ring, _take it!_ It is cursed. I have no desire for it. No sane being should ever desire it. It's yours!" He knew he was babbling but he couldn't help it. Now was his only chance to stop the impending doom hanging over both their heads.

Skuld snatched the signet out of his hand and his fingers burned where they touched. She offered it back to Urd who spared the ring one glance before tossing back her head, opening her mouth, and swallowing it whole.

"It is done," the middle sister spoke. "But a price must still be paid."  
"In _blood!_ " the youngest cried joyfully.  
"No," Urd tempered. "Final and forever, but not in blood. The mortal beast's days are few. He will pay the price as all flesh does. And soon. But it shall not be by our hand." Oh, thank Idunn! At least Bruce would not die.

They turned as one to look at Loki. He was still on his knees. A molecule of hope bubbled up into his head, but he crushed it down. Maybe... Maybe he would make it out of this, too? Maybe they would both see one more sunrise? Just one more.

"Great ladies, I beseech you-"  
"Silence!" they shrieked as one.   
"The son of Brian is banished from your sight. You will not look on him in this realm, in this form ever again. Ever! He is cast out from Yggdrasil. From the branches, from the limbs, from the roots of the tree of life. He is absolutely forbidden from all you know." Urd's voice was solemn and not to be contradicted.

"And you, bastard son of two kingdoms," began Skuld, "you are unloved and forsaken. There is no place for you anywhere in the nine realms. Therefore, you will return to Asgard in the form of a fool. And your name will be scattered to the winds."

They turned as one to the raging Banner, caught helpless under their unquestionable power. They raised their hands and Loki knew _this was it_. He was utterly bereft of hope. He would never see him again. There was nothing he could do, no lies he could weave, no worthy petition or pleas on his lips. He imagined there was a glimmer of recognition in Bruce's transformed green eyes, but it was untrue. There was nothing but hate and pain and blind rage.

" _Bruce_ ," he whispered and the Norns vanished the entirety of his being from sight. The room was still. Loki felt the tangible and awful vacancy left in Bruce's wake like an fiery spear impaling his chest. 

"Know this: Odin sleeps." Verdandi turned to Loki, her odd parting words floating on the air. And without any of the bluster of their arrival, the Norns faded from view.

The room was empty once more.

Loki let out the great breath he wasn't aware he was holding in. The sigh turned to shaking. Shaking turned to sobbing. He curled upon himself, unashamed in his solitude, and cried until the stone floors were wet with tears.

  
****


	27. Chapter 27

  
Tony poured himself another two fingers of vodka. No vermouth, no olives, no onions, no ice. Just pure liquid potato gasoline. He threw his head back and the cold beverage sluiced down his eager throat.

Why? _Why_ had he let Fury take Banner into custody? One slim thread of evidence, well actually two. The still photo from the bus station and the security video that Tony himself had provided. But what did it prove, really? What was truly going on between Bruce and the prince of darkness? There were certainly more dimensions under the surface.

However, they'd all jumped to conclusions. Medicating Bruce and locking him up, that was the easy choice, right? Why had Tony gone along with it?

He poured himself another straight shot of vodka. Was it because Fury was making the hard decisions that Tony usually did? He admitted, it was a relief of sorts to not carry that burden. Always the one to be counted on. Always the one who came through in a pinch. Always the one who knew the right course of action. Why did it _always_ have to be Tony Stark?

But relinquishing control to Fury wasn't the right course of action. No, it felt wrong in his guts. They'd played it off as 'rescuing' Bruce from Loki's evil clutches. Saving him from himself. Knowing better. Keeping him comatose was just a temporary measure until they got to the bottom of the issue and found a better, more humane, sustainable way to deal with the problem. But those were lies. _It was_ the long game, wasn't it? It was a simple way to keep their favorite weapon on ice, safe and secure, until they needed him.

And hell, it wasn't fair! It wasn't humane or ethical. And it probably constituted half a dozen human rights violations.

And it took away his science buddy. Bruce's icy exterior was just starting to thaw. That hard carapace he'd had to grow over time, to deal with life on the run. With being a hunted man. Tony was getting him to strut, and wasn't that the whole point? To live his life, to be human again. 

Fuck it, he was his _friend!_ And now he was gone.

Loki had entirely disappeared from their global radar. Thor confirmed he wasn't on Asgard either, but he intimated there was other trouble afoot. 

But if that was the case, then where was Loki? And where had he taken Bruce? Tony wanted answers. He wanted to make the Trickster pay. He wanted to throw him through the nearest window, just like he'd done to Tony.

"Is the offer for a drink still valid?" The words curled in the air, an evil accent, threaded with promises of pain. Tony knew that voice anywhere.  
The billionaire stared down Loki, a gaze full of hate and violence and liquor.  
"Only for folks who don't abduct my friends." His eyes narrowed. "For everyone else, it's BYOB."

The reference went completely over the demi-god's head. He sauntered over to a bar stool in Tony's opulent lounge, and collapsed heavily on it, all 2000 pounds of him and his ridiculous Asgardian armor.

"I didn't abduct Bruce. I saved him. From _you_." Loki had the audacity to curl his lip at Tony.  
"From me? Uh, I wasn't the one who put him under some sort of mind control spell!"  
"Is that what you think? I was controlling him?" His laugh was short, harsh. "How little you know. But it matters not. He's gone." Loki refused to look at Tony now, inspecting the glossy sheen of the bar's mahogany surface instead.   
"Gone? ... _Dead_?" Tony held his breath, waiting for the answer he prayed wouldn't come.  
"No. But gone. For good."

Was... that a look of sadness? Of resignation? He wasn't sure if emotions translated on other planets, but on Earth, that look meant one thing. Impulsive, he grabbed a glass and poured Loki a generous shot of vodka. The demi-god raised his eyes to Tony and then his eyebrows, questioning.

"You look like you could use it?" he shrugged. Tony sipped at his own glass now. It would be a death wish to get fall-down drunk in front of public enemy numero uno. Temperance was Tony's current strategy.

Loki curled one hand around the offered glass, contemplating it for long moment before tipping it to his lips and draining it entirely.

"Passable," was his only comment on the liquor. Tony was affronted, but he didn't show it. Thousand-dollar-a-bottle limited edition Grey Goose was only 'passable'? Asshole.

"Tell me you didn't have anything to do with Bruce's enthrallment," he murmured quietly. "Tell me it was _Fury_. Tell me he kept him _slave_ to that _vile potion_." With each word, his voice grew louder. " _Tell me_ he made him his personal attack dog. Then tell me _where he is_. And I'll pick his liver out myself!" Loki's burning eyes met Tony's and the billionaire was rooted to the spot. Holy shit. The fire, the pure unblemished anger. What was this, divine retribution?

"What are you, his avenging angel? And moreover, where is Bruce? He's 'gone'? That's not good enough. Where?!" Tony was really trying not to yell and inflame the situation, but it was really _really_ difficult. He wanted answers out of this demon, but he was currently focused on being all morose and emo. It was too weird.

"I don't know," he admitted in a murmur, eyes downcast again, coming off his angry high. "The Norns, awful beasts, gave him banishment or death. He's somewhere. Bruce is still alive. I know that. But where they took him..." he shook his head sadly. "Impossible to know." Okay, this was a dead end. 

"I know. About you two. Or, let me put it another way." Fuck it, Tony downed the remainder of his drink in one gulp. "Our security footage picked up the two of you..." he gestured with his hands, unsure how to phrase it and keep his head firmly attached to his shoulders. "...locking lips. And Bruce basically admitted you were together after that." He risked a glance to Loki, who was staring Tony down like he hoped he'd catch on fire. "So... you two are or were in a relationship?" He winced, waiting for a whiplash reaction that never came.

Loki simply closed his eyes and bobbed his head once in acknowledgement. After a long moment, he licked his lips and cast his eyes back to the bar-top.  
"I love him, Stark."

Holy crap. He wasn't expecting that. But it was written all over the prince of darkness' face. 

Love? _Really?_ Was he capable of that? Tony was skeptical, but it was apparent that whatever the definition, Loki felt it thoroughly.

He'd never seen the man in such a state. He didn't even think it was possible. But then again, up until this evening, Loki had always been a one-dimensional character to Tony. Always antagonizing, always filled to the brim with chaos and machinations and plotting and anger and evil.

Maybe there was another side to him. Maybe Bruce had found it. Maybe it _was_ love.

"I'm sorry." He unscrewed the bottle and poured each of them another glass. "Is there no way to find him?" Loki choked on a laugh, sad and bitter.  
"It would be a miracle. The Fates are the most powerful force in the galaxy. There's nothing that can oppose them or unravel their schemes once set in motion."

The two men sat in sad shared silence and emptied the bottle.

  
***

  
Snow was starting to fall outside. It was earlier this year than last, the director mused. But wasn't that the way of things?

The stack of paperwork on his desk was slowly dwindling and Nick finally decided he'd had enough for the day. What a whirlwind few months it had been. The world was _not_ ready for a higher form of war as Thor had ominously declared. But it was coming all the same. What could they do now? How could he protect the 8 billion souls on this pathetic little sphere?

Banner was his ace in the hole. At least he had been. He was fractious and uncontrollable and that was fine enough but then he'd been possessed by Loki. And there were no other options for SHIELD to take.

 _'There's always another option'_

Tony's remembered words crawled through his head. But that was a fantasy for children and self-declared gods. Nick was certainly not the latter and could barely remember ever being the former.

No, he dealt in a word of absolutes and hard decisions and hurting those closest to you. The scars were buried but not forgotten. His life was one of sacrifices and cruelty and awful blind pragmatism to serve the greater good. He made the hard decisions. He had to. No one else would or could.

 _God_ , he was glad it was Friday. 

The clock on his deck ticked over to display 17:00 and he opened his bottom desk drawer, pulling out a bottle of amber liquid and one glass.

There was a silent pop and a chill in the air. Without looking up, Nick pulled out a second glass.

But the creature on the opposite side of the room was not who he was expecting.

"Director. It's safe to say, the pleasure is _all mine_." Loki was pallid and drawn and there was a fierce desperation on his face. Nick swallowed audibly despite himself. He was like a caged animal, that was plain. Leg caught in a trap, keen to gnaw it off in order to free himself and sate his lust for revenge.

Nick broke eye contact at his own risk and poured two glasses of scotch.  
"I have a feeling you might like this. Sit, please," he gestured at an empty chair. But several things happened at once. Loki flew across the desk and grabbed a glass, crushing it against the wood surface, liquor spilling everywhere. He grabbed the director by the collar of his coat and the momentum rolled them, chair and all, into the far wall where the erstwhile god menaced a sharp shard of glass at Nick's one good eye.

"You're right, I _do like this_. I do like watching you _squirm_ and _gag_ on your own fear and know your mortal life is as easily squashed as an insect." Loki's teeth had grown long and sharp and his eyes were blood red. He was morphing into a literal demon. Nick couldn't help that his heart raced and the sweat beaded along the strap of his eye-patch. But he had to at least try and pretend to keep his cool.

"You have about fifteen seconds before this room fills with armed guards who would really love to put a bullet between those creepy eyes," he attempted.  
" _Really?_ " Loki cocked his head, pretending to listen. "Perhaps you should pay closer attention, Nicholas. It's just you and I inside this sphere. No one gets in or out unless I will it. You are _utterly_ alone."

It was true. There was no sound coming through the door. No office chatter, just dead empty air. He couldn't alert anyone of his peril. The agents outside would be completely ignorant of his dead body bleeding out across the burgundy carpet. 

This was how it would end. Nick could see that now. There were no weapons at his disposal, no help on the way, no reason or pleas that would pierce the insanity of Loki's rage. He was a dead man.

And just like that, Loki's face contorted into laughter.  
"Oh, Nicholas, that was _delightful_. I will amend what I told Stark earlier, you are now my favorite toy."  
"Stark?"  
"Oh yes, he's a delight and a joy. We get on like _brothers_ ," he half-laughed, half-sneered.

"So, you're _not_ going to kill me?" He was hesitant to let his heart rate drop back to normal, to erase the fear from his face.  
"Oh no, not today. The unveiled terror in your eyes is vengeance enough." The demi-god's face contorted into solemnity. "I am showing you mercy. Be very, _very_ , aware of that. It is not something I am in the habit of doing. In fact, I have fantasized _at length_ about slicing you limb from limb. About carving out your organs and feeding the carrion to worms." He sucked his top lip thoughtfully and Nick refrained from speaking or even breathing. He knew he was on the tenuous edge of a knife. 

"I was shown mercy quite recently. A horrible, grotesque form of it, but mercy nonetheless." He pulled the director closer, their noses touching, the glass dagger playing at Nick's lower eyelid. "You have done _horrible things_ to creatures quite dear to me. I am liable to rescind my offer at any time. And if I do, I will visit upon you and those you hold close the _absolute worst tortures_ I can concoct. Things that I have borne. Things that I have seen performed." He paused, letting the threat sink in. "You are to walk a very, _very_ fine line from now on and consider the impacts of your decisions before taking action. Do I make myself clear?"

Nick couldn't possibly nod without taking out his own eye, so he simply murmured in agreement.  
"Y-yes."

And just like that, Loki backed off like a spring in a trap, dropping the glass and walking backwards to the other end of the room.

"Until we meet again, Nicholas. _Pleasant_ dreams." And he was gone in a puff of snow.

Sound returned to the office and Nick remembered how to breathe.   
He grabbed the bottle and drank from it directly.

  
***

...

...

"Scrapper 142! What do you have for me today?" He rubbed his hands together gleefully.  
"A big one sir, he looks like a fighter." She paused in thought. "No, no, he looks like a _champion_."

  
  
THE END

*******  
*******

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh... it's been a long time coming!  
> I think I caught all the loose ends, but if I didn't, please let me know and I will do my best to answer your questions!
> 
> THANK YOU for coming along with me on this crazy ride! It's been one rollercoaster!
> 
> And YES, I am considering writing my first sequel ever. #swigsVodka I just need to channel Tony a little more and we'll see where it goes. Wish me luck. :)
> 
> THANK YOU x 3000!


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